Hurricane
by Heimchen
Summary: Just a little character study of a unique and not so little tank engine, and a look at how he first makes out after being put up for sale at his former home on the Mainland. An EU story set in the CGI Thomasverse.
1. Part One

Here's another companion-piece sort of story, this time featuring another favourite character who was first introduced in the JOURNEY BEYOND SODOR special...Hurricane! This character proved to be quite the puzzler for me for a while. I found it hard to reconcile scenes of him initially meanly bashing Thomas about with his later, friendlier overtures and ultimate decision to risk his own self to save the little blue guy from disaster. For sure one of the more complicated personalities the franchise has offered in recent years, I thought, and how better to explore a complicated character than to write fanfic about him. So-here you go! Timewise, this one takes place in-between the Henry story and the one about the German engine, but I'll try to write it so it could also be read as a standalone...

Disclaimer: The following story is intended for non-profit entertainment purposes only and is not meant to infringe upon the rights of any Thomas the Tank Engine/Thomas and Friends copyright holders.

HURRICANE

Part One

On the grounds of a steelworks in the northern UK, a lonely locomotive sat awaiting his fate. His name was Hurricane and he was a tank engine and a singular one at that, as large as many tender engines and with a grand total of ten big driving wheels planted on the rails beneath him. Only a month ago, he'd been working at the nearby plant with four other engines, but then the plant had shut down and begun renovations and the other engines had been taken away. Now, he was the only one left, waiting by himself in a shed sited well away from the buildings he'd once called home, watching as the blowtorches flared and the hammers rang 24/7, reshaping the works into something updated and new that might or might not include him.

A car drove in through the main gates and onto the grass and towards his shed. It was the first time anyone had come near him since the last of the other engines had gone away and he went instantly on alert, fearing the worst. The car stopped next to his track and several people climbed out, one of whom he recognized as the steelworks manager, the others strangers. Hurricane fastened all his attention on the steelworks man and looked at him pleadingly.

"Well, here he is," the manager said to the other two humans. "He was still working only six weeks ago and was fine then, so I imagine he's still in excellent order. I had a man oil him up a couple of times and his water tank's full and we put in all of what was left of the coal, at least three-quarters there, so you should have plenty of fuel to get you where you need to go."

"Sounds ver' good, sir. I'll get 'im started," replied one of the strangers, and they both went into Hurricane's shed and climbed into his cab. The locomotive felt one of the humans open up his firebox, the other started fingering his controls, and his anxiety grew. The steelworks man was the only person who'd remained outside, in front of Hurricane, and he could see that the manager seemed indifferent, just totally blasé about all that was going on, as though he could care less about what was happening to his engine. The man's attitude coupled with his own uncertainty over his fate was more than the poor locomotive could stand. Dismayed and frightened, he broke down and begged the manager for help.

"Please, sir. What's happening? I don't understand."

"What's that?" the man, startled, exclaimed.

"What's going to happen to me?"

The steelworks man regarded the big tank engine for a long moment. "Well, you've been sold, is what's happening," he finally answered.

"Oh…"

The steelworks manager wasn't the only human present who'd heard the fear in Hurricane's voice. One of the people inside his cab poked her head out.

"What's going on out here?" the woman asked. "Are you worried, big fellow? You sound upset."

The sudden offer of concern almost unraveled Hurricane. "I don't know what's happening," he reiterated miserably.

The woman climbed out of his cab. Then, there she was, standing in front of him, looking up at him with a very kind expression on her face, the most kindness he'd been shown by any human in many days. "Well, it's like Mister Finch said. You've been sold, Hurricane," she told him.

"Am—am I going to be s-scrapped?"

"No, not even close. You've been sold to the best new owner imaginable, a gentleman named Sir Topham Hatt, whose family owns and runs the North Western Railway on the Island of Sodor."

"Sodor? Sodor!" The big engine's eyes widened with sudden astonishment. "But that's— Thomas was from Sodor!"

"That's right. And you'll be seeing him soon, I'm sure."

"But I—I— We treated him so badly! He must have told you!"

"He did," said the woman, "and he also told us about how you damaged yourself saving him from a molten ore spill. That's the part Sir Topham Hatt thought was the more honest reflection of your character when he was deciding whether to take a chance on you, so here we are, to fire you up and take you to your new home."

Hurricane stared down at the woman, his dismay and fright obliterated by an avalanche of new emotions he couldn't even begin to dig through. All he could think of to do at that instant was mumble his humble thanks, all the while keeping his eyes downcast, his whole aspect now torn between bewilderment and relief. The woman, whose name was Denise Doyon and who loved all steam locomotives with a passion matched only by that of her fireman-husband, Pierre, watched him with sympathy. He'd obviously been expecting the worst, and to be given a reprieve seemed to be something of a shock for him…it was sad to see. But he was grateful too, no doubt about that, and she already believed Thomas's assertion that he was a kind engine at heart, for he had the softest eyes. No engine she'd ever known who had a soft eye had been a bad one.

What Hurricane didn't know and never would, was that Sir Topham Hatt had made his purchase conditional, the condition being that if the crew he sent to fetch him had any doubts about Hurricane's personality whatsoever, they were to express their reservations to Mister Finch and veto the sale on the spot. Denise was very happy to catch the steelworks manager's eye at that point and give him a very slight, almost imperceptible nod, and so the judgement was made and the deal sealed.

"Let me get that paperwork," Mister Finch said in response, clapping his hands together with satisfaction, and climbed back in his car and drove off. Hurricane, ignorant of what had just transpired, watched him go, looking surprised. Denise watched Hurricane, smiling. She already liked him.

"I'm sorry people haven't been speaking to you about your situation. Is there anything else you want to ask us now? Anything you want to know?" she offered.

The big tank engine regarded her. He still looked surprised and a tad apprehensive as he formulated his next words.

"Do you—would you know anything about Frankie? The diesel who worked with me?"

"Your diesel friend? She's in a shop, undergoing some major maintenance, nothing serious, just routine, I believe. Once the renovations here at your steelworks are done and they're ready to fire everything back up, she'll be sent back along with four brand new diesels to start work again. That's why you and the experimental engines were put up for sale, I'm afraid. No more steam-powered locos. The company that owns this plant wanted to go all diesel and they're willing to put in a proper little fleet this time."

"Oh… So she'll have help…"

"Yes, and a good job and a home for years to come. Good news for Frankie, I'd say."

"Yes. It is…"

The words were positive, yet that face… Impulsively, Denise reached out and stroked his buffer plate. She was pretty sure she knew the cause for his unhappiness. "I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to say goodbye to her," she said quietly.

"Yeah…well…it happens..."

Hurricane's voice trailed off and he went silent to digest all that he'd just learned. So, Frankie was fine and she'd be back at the steelworks once it was open again, with new friends to share the workload. He was glad for her, but wished he'd been able to bid her a proper farewell…he missed her. And Sodor! He was going to Sodor! How lucky was that! The human's little hand was still patting over his buffer plate, in an affectionate, reassuring way, and for the first time he looked down and really saw her. Was she typical of the sort of people he'd be working with once there, people who understood steam engines and who knew how to relate to them? He hoped so. Hurricane had never felt himself to be mistreated, exactly, but there had been times in his past when he'd been regarded as little more than a machine built for hard labour and that had been dispiriting.

He started noticing other things about the nice little human standing in front of him. She was wearing a uniform, for starters, that looked like a railway worker's uniform…how strange… Whoever was still inside his cab had already gotten a roaring big fire going and she was surely too small anyway to be of much use in that department, which meant that she must be…had to be… Hurricane blinked, and blinked again.

"Are you…a driver?" he asked at last.

The woman acted as if she'd been waiting for his question. "Better hope so, for your sake," she quipped. "I am the one who's going to have a hand on your throttle all the way back to Sodor."

"All the… I think I'll like that."

That made her grin. A lot. "A saucy one!" she exclaimed. "Oh, you're going to fit right in, I just know it."

Hurricane wasn't at all sure what she was getting at. He wasn't used to conversing with humans on anything but a pragmatic level.

"Just reporting the facts, ma'am," he tried, still baffled, and this time she absolutely _beamed _back at him. Without intending to, he'd very much pleased her, Hurricane realized, although he still didn't know exactly why. The nuances of this new human/engine relationship were going to take some getting used to, he thought.

"Pierre! Get out here!" the woman yelled at whoever was still inside his cab. "You've got some competition."

Again, Hurricane drew a blank. Competition? With whom? How? Then the man was there, a big fellow with black hair and eyes and one of those odd bars of extra hair some of the men liked to wear above their mouths…a mustache, Hurricane had heard it called. He looked just as friendly as the woman, although his first words to the engine provoked a bit of a start.

"So, 'urricane, already you like to sweet-talk my wife, eh?"

"I— _What?_"

The two humans dissolved into fits of laughter, even leaning for support against his buffers. Hurricane looked from one to the other of them, quite flabbergasted, but also a little intrigued and happy. He hadn't felt at all happy for some weeks now and the humans' infectuous good cheer was impossible to resist, even if they appeared to be having some fun at his expense. They quickly made up for it by introducing themselves as soon as they'd calmed down, treating him with the same respect they would have shown another human.

"I've never met a crew who were married," Hurricane replied, warming to the attention, "or a lady engine driver."

"We are a rarity," the lady driver remarked. "But so are you. You're the first tank engine decapod we've ever met. We'd actually read about you, but never expected to ever see you, or _drive _you…it's quite the thrill for us, you know."

Now it was Hurricane's turn to beam. It might have been awhile since he'd been happy, but to be openly admired and looked upon with real appreciation…that he hadn't known in what seemed like forever. His builders had seemed to admire him once. Then that had faded and he'd been sent off to work at a long string of different jobs, none of which had suited him well. It wasn't until the steelworks had acquired him and had his drive mechanisms redesigned to better handle the close quarters within the plant that he'd found his niche.

His new crew examined his drivers now as they began a preliminary walkabout of Hurricane's exterior. "Dis is articulated now, _oui_?" Pierre the fireman remarked as he ran a hand over one of the big coupling rods. "You can call a tank engine articulated?"

"Two separate sets of drivers. Don't see why not," Denise called back from the engine's other side. "Hurricane? Have you noticed a difference in your performance since your redesign? This was all done so you could better negotiate curves, wasn't it?"

"Yes!" Hurricane replied, pleased that they'd even thought to ask for his opinion. He was, after all, the one who'd been most affected by the change. "I can handle much tighter turns now as long as I go a little slow. When I was working inside the plant, if Frankie could manage it, then so could I."

"Ah. Good to know," Denise said. "A little agility's always good for dock work."

"An' de quarry. Some tight tracks dere," Pierre added.

Hurricane began getting a little excited. He could feel the humans touching him here and there as they continued their examination, making sure that all appeared connected as it should with no suspicious gaps or leaks, and his boiler had started bubbling nicely. He was almost in full steam and the talk of docks and quarries had fired his imagination. Like all steam engines, Hurricane was happiest when out on the rails, pleasing his humans and making full use of all the power and speed at his disposal. He was of no use to anyone, not even himself, stuck here in this shed, and he suddenly wanted _OUT _with an urgency which surprised even him. His change of mood readily communicated itself to his new crew. They could feel his surging energy as a faint tremor vibrating right through his entire being, and when Denise got back out in front of him and looked up, she could tell from his expression that all his despondency was gone, replaced by an unrestrained eagerness to be underway. It was a great example of one of the things she loved best about locomotives, just their ability to regain their zest for life in such short order no matter how great their despair or suffering. She'd always thought that humanity could learn a lot from the resiliency of engines.

"Just one last thing to do, Hurricane," she soothed. "Just a bit of paperwork to sign and we'll be out of here."

"Good-oh," he said, in a funny, throaty voice which made her smile.

Mister Finch the steelworks manager finally came back with another plant worker in tow to act as a witness. Hurricane watched as the four humans went through the papers spread out on the hood of the car, with one or the other of them occasionally writing something down, and within a few minutes the deed was done and the engine knew that his life had just changed forever. He was a North Western loco now, from the Island of Sodor. Whether that change would be for the better remained to be seen.

Hurricane was finally allowed to exit his shed after bleeding off a great cloud of steam. The two steelworks men watched, then the manager suddenly looked startled and shot up one arm in a gesture of arrest.

"I almost forgot!" he shouted over the wheeshing steam. "We still have some spare wheels for Hurricane! Do you want them?"

"Spares?" Denise echoed.

"Yes. They won't be compatible with the new diesels. You might as well take them, otherwise we'll just have to melt them down again."

The Doyons looked around their cab. The offer was certainly enticing. "Maybe dey fit de floor?" Pierre suggested. "Can we tie dem?"

"I'll loan you a truck," the manager called. "Come on back to the works. Hurricane knows the way."

The big tank engine complied, using his track to follow the car, rolling smoothly forward under his new driver's guidance. But at the entrance to the steelworks, he felt himself eased to a stop and the little human leaned out of her side window to address him.

"Hurricane? I'm obviously not practised yet in the more delicate maneuvers here," she said. "If I give you free rein, can I trust you to go in and pick up that truck on your own?"

"Of course, ma'am! No problemo."

"Good. Off you go then."

Hurricane surged forward again, feeling very proud. It was extraordinarily rare for a driver to allow their engine to act on their own, unheard of when machine and human were so new to one another. With great care and efficiency, Hurricane entered the steelworks and made his way over to the alcove which served as the engines' occasional repair bay. Mister Finch was already there, supervising a small 4-wheeled crane as it lifted parts into a truck. There already seemed to be a lot more than just wheels inside the truck's body.

"Ah, there you are," the steelworks manager said. "Does your steamworks forge its own parts?"

"Sometimes," Pierre replied.

"Oh, good. Then you may as well have the molds we made for some of Hurricane's parts too—some of them are one of a kind and you won't be able to get them on the open market. And there's a couple of rods and other stuff, and I've got some of his old design and background info here on top of his maintenance records. Your engineers could probably use that."

"Oh gosh! Thank you so much, Mister Finch." Denise leaned out of Hurricane's cab to receive the thick sheaf of papers Finch held up to her, then carefully stowed it inside her kitbag along with the engine's legal papers and logbook. "This is so very generous of you," she added, giving the man her very best smile.

Mister Finch shrugged. "None of it's going to be of any use to us anymore. Oh, and don't worry about returning the truck or the tarps. I'm pretty sure the company's replacing the lot. Some new stock especially designed for diesels or something. Besides, it'll be handy to have Hurricane's spares already stored in one place until your steamworks gets them sorted out."

The Doyons effusively thanked the steelworks manager again and he watched as the last of his former steam engines nimbly reversed himself to couple up to the loaded truck. With the sale made and the locomotive on its way out the door, he could afford to feel magnanimous.

"Tell Sir Topham Hatt that he's getting a monstrous bargain in that engine," he called after them. "I don't think that machine knows the meaning of the words 'shirk' or 'lazy'. He did a lot of good work for us."

"Don't worry, sir, he'll be appreciated," Denise called back. "Thanks again, and good bye." But Mister Finch had already turned away, getting back to the real job of overseeing the plant's renovations. The woman thoughtfully patted the side of Hurricane's interior cab and took up his controls again. "Well done," she told the big engine. "I should be fine from now on."

Hurricane, as docile as he was strong when it came to obeying his human masters, became instantly subservient once more. Denise felt him rein in his enormous tractive power, the energy thrumming through him, all hers now to direct and use as she pleased, and heaved a little internal sigh of relief. He was indeed one of the good ones. Her trust in him had not been misplaced. As soon as they'd cleared the steelworks, she opened him up, and Hurricane scooted forward and rushed through the main gates like the storm he'd been named after. He ran onto the mainlines and turned for his new home without a single backward glance, eager to be gone at last and to put a definitive end to what had been one of the more checkered parts of his recent past.

to be continued...


	2. Part Two

HURRICANE

Part Two

Hurricane sped along the track as fast as his new driver would allow. It had been a morning of wild contrasts for him, from despair to exhilaration, and the best way he knew of to settle himself was to have a good run. Hurricane was not a very sophisticated locomotive. Although confident in his abilities and dealings with other engines, he much preferred to be told what to do, and he missed the routine he'd known at the steelworks and Frankie's directives. He felt somewhat adrift on top of his emotional turmoil, and the strange urgency he'd felt in the shed earlier was nagging at him again, urging him to hurry on to his new job with its comforting new guidelines.

He wondered if the two humans inside his cab would be his permanent new crew. Probably not. The woman had told him that they'd come to take him to his new home. She would surely have said something about being his new driver for keeps if that were the case. It was too bad, he thought. He really liked her already, especially since she'd trusted him to get the truck on his own, and the novelty of having a lady driver appealed to him. Hopefully, there'd be more like her, and her nice fireman-husband too, over on Sodor. He thought about asking about the crew situation, but put it off because the two humans seemed to have gotten into an intense discussion and he knew better than to interrupt people when they were talking. Unfortunately, he couldn't understand a word of what he heard. Both were speaking some sort of foreign language, not all that surprising given that the fireman had a strong accent, enough so that Hurricane had had trouble understanding some of his words. Still, he wished that they'd stuck to English. It was no fun at all eavesdropping on your crew if you couldn't make out what they were saying!

He turned his attention to his surroundings instead. They'd already gone by the turnoff to the Bridlington yard where Hurricane had normally delivered his freight and he had only vague recollections of going this way a few times in the past. He looked about, absorbing the unfamiliar scenery, wondering if he'd ever see any of it again. Thomas had said that engines on Sodor didn't often venture over onto the Mainland. It was more usual that the Island exported its goods by ship, which was no doubt why his temporary crew had made the comment about his being good for dock work. Hurricane liked the idea of working close to the sea again. He'd done so often back when he was working for the Great Eastern Railway, the company which had arranged for his initial design and creation, and he still had good memories of those early days.

A new structure eventually appeared off in the distance, one which appeared to straddle the tracks themselves. Hurricane wondered if it might be the drawbridge that spanned the gap between the Mainland and Sodor itself, and was soon able to see for himself that his assumption was correct, plus which his driver began slowing him for a safe crossing. The big tank engine felt a little quiver run through him when his wheels first rolled over the new ground beneath the rails on the far side of the bridge. This was it, then. He was on Sodor and now belonged to yet another new owner in a long string of people and organizations which had once owned him. It was just one of the sad realities of every engine's life, that he might be passed on at any time, for a whole slew of reasons and sometimes none at all. But he'd always hoped for the best and had tried his best, and Hurricane tried to remain positive as his last view of the Mainland fell away behind him.

And now, here came a large proper railway station, and quite a beautiful one at that. Hurricane's spirits, which had just taken a momentary dip as he contemplated the finality of the end of his previous situation, lifted again as his new crew guided him in under the high transparent canopy and halted him at one of the numerous platforms. How busy it was and there were so many waiting passengers! Hurricane's excitement began to rekindle as he looked about. He was far more used to the organized uproar of a bustling goods yard, but seeing crowds of people was nice too.

Both of his new crewmen disembarked then and his driver came forward to speak with him.

"Hurricane? Doing all right, are you?"

"Yes, ma'am, I am," he replied at once, then happily added, "We're on Sodor, aren't we?"

"We sure are. This is Vicarstown, our biggest station and our rail gateway to the Mainland. We've gone through here and taken freight trains over as far as Bridlington ourselves."

"Bridlington? That's where I used to deliver my goods! Frankie too."

"Well, then you ought to feel right at home if you ever get tasked with a similar job. But for now…Pierre and I are going to leave for a while to have some lunch and I want you to listen to this nice friend of ours, Mister Billings, who's going to keep an eye on you in the meantime. You're okay with that, right, Hurricane?"

"Of course I am, ma'am…sir…" He swung his gaze onto the uniformed station guard who'd just edged into his field of view. The man was smiling and did indeed look like a nice person. "Do you want me to do anything while I wait?" he asked, addressing Denise again.

"No no, you just relax and have a rest and do whatever Mister Billings tells you to do. We'll be back soon."

Hurricane said nothing more as Denise and Pierre hurried off. The two of them were actually on their day off and had volunteered to suit up and go over to the Mainland to pick up their railway's newest acquisition for Sir Topham Hatt. Now that they had the engine halfway home, they intended to reward themselves with a tasty meal at one of their favourite Vicarstown restaurants and pick up a little goody en route back for Bobby Billings too, the station guard who'd cheerfully agreed to mind Hurricane in their absence.

When the couple eventually did return to their loco, they were treated to a welcome sight. Hurricane had attracted quite the crowd of train enthusiasts, just as they'd expected he would, and the lot of them were clustered close to his front and he was speaking to them on his own. The Doyons sidled up to Mister Billings, who'd moved to stand back by the engine's cab while he supervised and watched the crowd.

"How's he doing?" Denise asked the guard quietly.

"Pretty good. You kin tell he's not used to talkin' to fans—he kept asking me for permission to answer questions at first—but he's been doin' fine since I convinced him to just go ahead and speak for himself. The kids were a touch leery of him for a bit, but he's actually a pretty friendly bugger. Won 'em over pretty quick."

"So I see…"

The three of them went silent to observe how Hurricane interacted with the railfans for a few minutes. Since the big tank engine was destined for public display at least some of the time and possible excursion work, it was important that he have the right sort of disposition and didn't put people off or frighten them. The fact that even the youngest children in the crowd were right up by his face already and looking up at him with expressions of awe and delight and no fear at all was very promising.

"So this is really the one from the steelworks?" Mister Billings went on. "One of the engines who made Thomas work there for the day?"

"Apparently."

The guard shook his head. "Hard to believe. He doesn't seem the type at all. What was the other engine workin' there with him?"

"A diesel shunter named Frankie. She's the only one the company hung onto and didn't sell. They're going all diesel."

"Ah, too bad. So this Frankie was a female engine?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. Well, it figures then."

Denise felt her lip twitch. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked the guard, working hard not to grin.

"Well! Think about it. It wouldn't be the first time a man made a fool of himself tryin' to please some woman. It probably works the same for engines as it does for humans."

"Dat is so, so true," Pierre added in a mournful voice. "I 'ave a Frankie myself."

Both men cracked up at that point, unable to maintain their composure any longer. Denise tried to appear insulted, but had no better luck with her pretense than the men, plus which it seemed a likely explanation. Hurricane seemed far too good-natured and straightforward to come up with any sort of nefarious schemes on his own. But she could imagine him being drawn into one.

Pierre got back into Hurricane's cab after that and Denise began strolling forward to make herself available to the cluster of railfans (after first slipping Bobby Billings a bag of crisps which he stuffed into his jacket pocket). A little blonde girl with beribboned pigtails, standing with her older brother next to their father, spotted the engine's driver coming up to them and erupted with a little shriek of delight.

"Denise! Denise! Denise!" she cried as she rushed over, then collided with the woman's legs and wrapped them tightly with her arms. Denise just laughed before managing to peel the child off and kneeling down to give her a proper hug. The little girl had become one of her biggest fans almost on sight and had told her numerous times since then that she thought that driving an engine was the 'bestest job in the whole wide world' and that she intended to become a driver herself when she grew up…or maybe a ballerina, she wasn't sure which yet.

"Oomph! You're getting to be a big little lady," Denise said to her. "Like my new locomotive?"

"I luvs him! He's so funny."

"Is that right?" Well, that was interesting. And more and more promising, Denise thought, as she finished walking the girl back to her family. "Hello, Mister Hibbs…Billy. You picked a great day to be train-spotting."

"We did, didn't we?" Mister Hibbs replied happily. "We've actually been out doing the engine thing all morning. But this…GER's A55…never thought we'd be lucky enough to see him in person."

He paused to smile up at the engine in question and Denise was glad to see Hurricane smiling right back…smiling at all the humans standing where he could see them, really, reinforcing her station guard friend's assessment of him as a 'friendly bugger'. A few more fans asked her questions after that, mostly to do with the engine's technical aspects, then Mister Hibbs spoke up again.

"So, is this one going up to Ulfstead too, to join the other experimentals? Or is he a North Western engine? I'm guessing the latter since you and your husband are the ones bringing him in."

Denise's heart skipped a beat. She glanced back up at Hurricane's face. His brows had shot sky-high and his mouth was open—he'd heard, all right. But Hurricane would have to wait for the moment.

"I'm not certain on the Ulfstead thing," she said, responding to the man's question. "Sir Topham Hatt bought this one as a working engine. I think he'll be loaning him to the Earl on a regular basis, but I don't know the details yet. I'm sure it'll be in the paper once they hash things out."

"Oh good. We just love the new engines Sir Norramby brought in. We went up last weekend to meet them." He gave his son's shoulder an affectionate squeeze and patted his little daughter's blonde hair. "Any excuse to go back up again, right?" he said to the pair.

"I like Stephen!" the little girl exclaimed, with a giggle.

"A lot of people do," Denise agreed, and put out her arms. "And I'm afraid we've gotta go, folks," she added, raising her voice to address the crowd. "This fellow still needs to visit the steamworks before we report in at Knapford. Thanks, everyone, for stopping by to give him such a nice Sodor welcome. I know Hurricane appreciates it and so do I."

The fans murmured agreeably in response and stepped back at once when Mister Billings, the station guard who'd been hanging about, came forward to clear the way ahead. UK railfans were always so polite, thought Denise. It was part of the reason she always went out of her way to accommodate their interests. Pierre, who'd remained aboard Hurricane throughout her interactions with the enthusiasts, already had Hurricane's fire well-stoked and his pressure up. They moved out after a farewell whistle, and the instant they'd cleared the platform, Denise heard the expected urgent pleas start up.

"Ma'am? Ma'am? Please, I have to ask you something. It's very important—"

"I know, Hurricane. Just give me a few minutes."

Pierre looked at his wife and shook his head sadly.

"Poor t'ing. 'e t'ink 'is friends are dead," he murmured. "Dat's why 'e not ask before."

"I think you're right," Denise muttered back.

There was a siding with a service platform sited a few hundred meters past the station proper and Denise eased the engine over to it and brought him to a stop. She exchanged another glance with her husband, then hopped out of the cab, leaving him in temporary charge while she talked to Hurricane face to face. At least she was about to deliver some happy news.

"That man," Hurricane exclaimed as she got round in front of him. "He said there were experimentals, up at that Ulfstead place. Did he mean engines? Experimental engines?"

"Yes he did."

"Is it my experimentals? The ones I worked with? Please tell me that it is!"

Denise just looked at him, her expression saying it all. Hurricane's anxiety broke in a huge gusting sigh of relief. "Oh," he breathed. "Oh, I'm so glad!" He was so overcome that he looked about ready to cry. "All three of them? Are they all right?"

"All three of them and they're all fine," Denise assured him. "And I'm sorry, Hurricane, that I didn't say anything earlier. I was expecting that you'd ask about them when I offered to answer questions back at the steelworks…how come you didn't?"

"I thought they'd been scrapped! Lexi and Theo got put up on flatbeds and Merlin had to take them away. It was the last time I ever saw them."

"Oh boy… Okay, that's…unfortunate. I do wish someone had said something to you. Lexi and Theo were put on the flatbeds because their new owner wasn't sure they'd be able to keep up with Merlin or find enough fuel stops en route to Ulfstead. He wanted to be sure they'd be safe during the journey and not unduly stressed."

"Ulfstead…is Ulfstead a station? What did you mean about me being loaned out?"

"Well, there's definitely a station there, but there's also a castle and a huge estate owned by the Earl of Sodor, Sir Robert Norramby. Super nice guy, beyond rich, and he loves locomotives so much that he's got his own private railway up there and quite the collection of engines, enough so that he'll be opening up a railway museum later this year. He's the one who bought your friends and he'll be the perfect owner—he loves the antiques and anything unusual. He was actually wanting to buy you too, from what I hear, but Sir Topham Hatt needed you a bit more, and I _think _Sir Topham and the Earl made some sort of arrangement about trading your services now and then."

"My services? Why? What would that man want me to do?" Hurricane wondered aloud.

"Basically just sit at a platform, look handsome, and be nice to all the people who come to admire you," said Denise with a laugh. "Think of it as being on static display, but just for the day. You still get to be a working engine the rest of the time."

"Oh. Well, that sounds all right. Ha ha, yeah! I could do that! Pretty much the same as what I just did, right?"

"Exactly so." Again Denise patted him, this time on the edge of his running board. "You're a good fellow, Hurricane. I'm glad I could give you some good news."

"Oh yeah, thanks so much! Do you think I'll get to see Lexi, Theo and Merlin soon?"

"I honestly don't know. But I'm certain you'll see them eventually. That, I can promise you."

"Great!"

With the last of his worries allayed, Hurricane felt keen to continue on again and his crew did not disappoint him. He was soon back on track, racing along with his truck skipping along behind him like a little paperweight. The residential area about Vicarstown quickly gave way to a mostly rural countryside, punctuated with several heavily wooded areas, yet the rails were busy despite the lack of people. Hurricane exchanged whistles with a number of trains going the opposite way as they continued on that early afternoon, smiling each time he did so because the resident engine always looked surprised when they saw that their cheerful greeter was a complete stranger. It seemed like almost no time at all before they came to another good-sized town and he was turned off the mainline and found himself at his new railway's steamworks.

Denise had gotten comfortable with Hurricane's controls and manner of going and directed him through a few tricky maneuvers to uncouple his truck and then reattach it to his other end so he could push it along before him as he entered the steamworks. It was evidently a slow day for the people on duty there. The entire shift was already waiting by the track to watch the new locomotive come in and so were Victor and Kevin.

"Hey-oh! Come to meet the newbie, have you?" Denise called out as soon as she'd halted Hurricane.

The men were already chattering amongst themselves, expressing their general surprise.

"That's the new tank engine?"

"Cripes, he's big!"

"Lookit those wheels!"

The chitchat continued as the fitters crowded closer, eager to check out the newest addition to the North Western fleet for themselves. Hurricane eyed them, but was more interested in the friendly-looking red engine and small wheeled crane regarding him from the next track over.

"Hullo," he tried, addressing the strange pair. "My name is Hurricane."

"Hello back," the red engine said at once, "and welcome to Sodor. I'm Victor and this little crane beside me is Kevin. We've been expecting you, although not quite this early." He glanced up at Denise, who was half-leaning out of the cab with her arms propped on the top of the cab's side window. "No problems to report already, I hope."

"Not at all, Victor. He runs like a dream," Denise replied. She climbed down out of Hurricane's cab while her husband hopped out on the other side and went forward to detach the truck from the engine's front coupling. "We just stopped by for a drop-off," she continued on. "The steelworks guys gave us a whole truckload of spare parts for Hurricane and you can even keep the truck."

"Really?" the human crew chief in charge of the shift remarked. "That's damn decent of them."

"I've got a whole stack of maintenance records and background tech stuff, too." She paused to rummage through her kit bag, to separate out Hurricane's certificates and anything related to any past work done on him. "I guess you guys get this portion to keep here and I'll leave the rest with Sir Topham Hatt this afternoon for now. I'm betting he'll want to look through Hurricane's design info himself before sending it back up and he keeps the ownership papers in his office, right?"

"Yup. We'll get some copies of his certificates down to him too once we've inspected our new boy for ourselves." The crew chief tucked the papers Denise had given him under one arm and stepped back a little to better look at Hurricane as a whole. "Looks in good shape. So we got a good one, did we?"

"The best. Isn't that right, Hurricane?" Denise said, reaching up to pat him, and the big tank engine actually felt himself blushing with pleasure, a very rare occurrence indeed. How nice everyone was to him! He wasn't used to having such friendly relationships with humans, not even with his own crew. The men at the steelworks had simply been too busy and too focused on their dangerous work to speak much with each other, let alone talk to him or Frankie unless it was to issue orders…he'd learned early on to maintain a certain professional distance. Yet here things seemed a lot more relaxed…

Both Doyons climbed back on board after that, their delivery duties done. Pierre tapped his wristwatch. "Still an 'our ahead. Maybe time for a nice wash?"

"Oh, great idea! Let's stop at the one just outside Knapford. We can top off his coal and water there too," said Denise, and took up her temporary charge's controls with enthusiasm. Her good feelings about him had only grown since leaving the Mainland and she already felt obliged to ensure that he looked his very best when the Fat Controller first laid eyes on him.

Hurricane was backed out of the steamworks after a final flurry of farewells and promises to see him again soon and resumed his journey. He'd heard his crew's comments about a wash at some place called Knapford and was suddenly wild to get there. With no truck to hamper him, he could run faster and more smoothly than ever and was delighted when his driver indulged him and let him race at full speed down a long straightaway. He might have been even happier if he'd been able to see the humans' expressions when he leapt ahead. In truth, they were testing him, to determine whether he could indeed meet the limits listed in the technical papers Pierre had read from earlier, and they were just as delighted as Hurricane to find that he was just as speedy as his design specs indicated he'd be.

"Whoo! Well done, Hurricane!" Denise yelled out after easing him back down from his headlong sprint. To her fireman, she added, "Oh, I think Pat and Lorne are going to love this one."

Hurricane, too excited and encouraged by his driver's friendliness to adhere to his usual reservations any longer, called back, "Pat and Lorne? Who are they? Are they engines?"

"No! They're fellow humans. And probably your new crew."

"New crew!" Hurricane marveled. "How do you know that? Did you assign them to me?"

"Ha ha, no, Sir Topham Hatt's the one who'll do that. Pat Greene and Lorne Paulson are two of the crewmen off our relief list who'll be trying you out this afternoon. They're lovely guys, best friends since they met during the War, and if they like you the way I think they will and you're agreeable, you'll have about the best crew on the Island."

"Agreeable?" the big engine repeated, marveling anew. "You mean, I get a choice?"

"Sure! Sir Topham Hatt's a big believer in only pairing up crews and engines who suit each other. A crew for every engine, an engine for every crew…that's one of his favourite slogans."

Hurricane went silent again to think over her words. So he had a say on this railway in who drove him, how remarkable! He'd never even thought about having—or wanting—any input into such things. He'd always accepted whoever stepped into his cab to direct him and always did his best to obey and please them. The notion of being able to choose one crew over another seemed very novel to him.

"I guess I couldn't ask for you two to be my crew, could I?" he said finally, laughing a little to show he meant it as a joke.

"Sorry," Denise replied, chuckling in turn, "but we've already got an engine to care for. A big green fellow named Henry. You'll meet him. And yes, we're a very good fit."

"Ah. Good-oh. For you, I mean."

He stopped talking in order to whistle at another oncoming train pulled by a smallish red tender engine, who looked quite shocked as he passed by.

"Dere's James," Pierre exclaimed. "Now everybody know about you, 'urricane."

"He means James has a big mouth," Denise expanded, exchanging a happy grin with her husband. Both of them were enjoying this new, increasingly boisterous mood of Hurricane's—it had hurt to see him so miserable and frightened earlier in the day. It boded well for how he'd take to his intended new crew, too. The two men Denise had named were both chatty sorts and they liked driving talkative engines.

They soon reached the washdown in question, still well ahead of the time they were expected to report in at Knapford. Luckily, the washdown crew's last customer, Percy, was just in the process of pulling out as they rolled up and they were able to scoot right in to take their turn. Percy didn't leave after all, either. His crew had spotted the huge new loco bearing down on them from behind at the last moment and pulled their own engine to a halt just before they exited the siding. They wanted to see the famous ten-wheeler, the only one of his kind ever built, for themselves.

The humans all gathered next to Hurricane and chitchatted happily while the two engines were briefly left unattended to regard one another. Percy had been stopped while still tilted somewhat towards the mainlines and could just see Hurricane's face. He was already well aware of who the new loco was, given the gossip that had been floating around about Sir Topham buying one of the 'steelworks' engines, and he was very relieved to see that the new loco looked friendly and didn't seem at all dour or menacing in the way Thomas had said he could be.

"Hi," he tried. "I guess you must be Hurricane."

To his further relief, the much bigger tank engine responded to his timid inquiry at once with obvious enthusiasm.

"That's right," he replied eagerly, "and I guess you must be Percy. Thomas said his best friend was a little green saddle tank engine named Percy."

"Heh heh, yes, that's me. Are you really going to stay here now, on Sodor?"

"Hyuh, I hope so. I got sold to Sir Topham Hatt."

"Oh, he bought me too. Right out of the workshop. He gave me my name too."

"Did he? Well, he picked a good one. It really suits you…Percy."

Both engines smiled in unison after that. Denise, standing nearby with the other humans, smiled a little too. She'd been eavesdropping on the locos' conversation with one ear while engaged in her own chat and was thinking that Hurricane couldn't have picked a better first Sudrian engine to try and befriend than Percy. It would do a lot for Hurricane's reputation for such a gentle, unassuming little engine such as Percy to spread the news that he'd already spoken with the new loco and that he was good-natured and approachable.

Percy's crew, their curiosity fulfilled, soon reclaimed their own engine and went back to their work. Hurricane settled in for a good cleaning session. The last time he'd been washed was just before he'd been taken out of work and sequestered in the little shed on the steelworks grounds. Even the rain hadn't been able to reach him there and it felt very good to be properly scrubbed again right down to his well-polished coat of paint.

For the next hour, Hurricane continued to be scrubbed and primped and rubbed within an inch of his mechanical life, at which point he was finally deemed done and beautiful enough to present to his new owner and his own new crew. The station where they'd be waiting lay just ahead, just a little further on down the mainlines. Hurricane surged forward to meet them, feeling confident.

to be continued...


	3. Part Three

HURRICANE

Part Three

As it turned out, Hurricane made his entrance at Knapford Station proper mere minutes later with perfect timing. He glided in at the platform next to the main offices, whistle blaring so loudly that it made a pair of railway workers walking alongside his track stop, turn and stare at him, and the two of them were joined almost at once by a man who came out of one of the offices, a short plump man wearing a formal suit and a top hat. This, Hurricane already knew, just had to be his new owner, Sir Topham Hatt himself. Denise had described him very well to the big tank engine while they'd been at the washdown, right down to his choice of headwear, and had coached Hurricane on how Sir Topham liked to be addressed. At the moment, though, words were unnecessary. Sir Topham simply looked his new engine up and down while his driver and fireman disembarked, and what he saw, much to Hurricane's relief, appeared to please him.

"Ah, Mister and Missus Doyon…so glad to see that you approved of our new addition. No problems to report, I presume."

"Not a one, Sir Topham Hatt, sir," Denise replied. "In fact, I'd say Hurricane is fit and ready to get back to work right now."

"Is that so? Heh heh, well, that's what I like to hear. An engine who wants to be useful… Hello, Hurricane, and welcome to Sodor! I expect you'll enjoy it here since goodness knows there's always plenty of work to do."

"Thank you, sir, and thanks ever so much for buying me! I really, _really _appreciate it," Hurricane fired back. Behind Sir Topham, Denise turned her face aside to hide a sudden grin. She'd suggested to the tank engine that he thank the Fat Controller after the two became acquainted, but hadn't expected that the engine's own spin on her words would exude such naked enthusiasm. It struck her as cute and a little funny.

"Oh, well, you're welcome, of course," Sir Topham replied. He paused, seeming a little bemused by the loco's eager enthusiasm. "So, now that that's settled, I do believe you…have some paperwork for me, Missus Doyon?"

"Sure do, sir." She slipped her kit bag off her shoulder and cradled it in her arms. "Lots of extras to tell you about too. You'll be pleased."

"Is that so…"

He motioned at the woman to join him inside his office, leaving Pierre and the two men who'd stopped to gawk at Hurricane out on the platform to deal with the engine. Hurricane shifted his focus to examine the strangers. Now that he had a known human to compare the others to, he could see that all three men were wearing the same sort of uniform, which likely meant…

"Hullo. Are you…Lorne and Pat?" he asked.

One of the new men, a big fellow as tall as Pierre but bulkier through the chest and with shorter, bandy legs which would have done a gunslinger proud, started grinning.

"Cor, listen t' that," he said. "Sounds like somebody's bin talkin' about us." He aimed his gaze at Pierre. "Better have all bin good stuff."

"Just de trut'," Pierre insisted, smirking in turn, which was evidently a good enough answer for the other man. He looked back at Hurricane and so did the third man, a smaller and much slighter, almost frail-looking figure whose face was reminiscent of a weary, droop-eared sheep.

"Hey there, Hurricane. I'm the one called Lorne…Lorne Paulson," the bigger man said.

"And I'm Pat Greene," added his sleepy-looking colleague. "I'm the fireman and Lorne's the driver. Lord knows he drives me crazy."

"And I don't even got a proper license. Haw!" quipped Lorne, and then all three men were snickering together and now Hurricane was the bemused one. He watched while the trio got involved in having a closer look at his wheel configuration, at least until they moved further back and passed out of his field of vision. He could still hear them, though, talking about the third cylinder which now powered his rearmost driving array and the practicalities of keeping his undercarriage properly lubricated. Hurricane was somewhat relieved that they sounded as though they knew what they were doing. His crews in the past had tended to be older, rather sober men who took seriously the business of working with him and directing his enormous tractive power, not casual, light-heartened sorts. But casual was fine too, he thought. It might even be rather fun!

The female driver, Denise, soon reappeared and both crews then climbed aboard Hurricane and moved him out. Sir Topham Hatt stood outside on the platform to watch them leave. He still looked very pleased and Hurricane did his best to help make for a memorable departure by adding a crisp little downward finish to his whistle and wheeshing out several great blasts of excess steam extra far once safely past everyone.

The next hour was one of the happiest Hurricane could remember experiencing in a long, long time. The four people crammed into his cab continued yakking on almost nonstop and frequently traded off driving him, and both developments were fine by him; the cheerful chatter made him feel good in turn and he could tell almost at once that everyone who was having a go at handling his controls knew what they were doing. And the route they were using…he loved it! Another big seaside town after the Knapford one and then they moved onto a smaller branch line that passed through one quaint little station after another, all of which they practised halting at just so. The best part of the smaller line was that it hugged the coast, the western coastline of all of Sodor as it turned out, so that Hurricane was never out of sight of the sea. He glanced over at it constantly as they worked their way northward, all the more so after Denise told him that the sea he was looking at was actually a strait between the Island of Sodor and the Isle of Man.

"If it weren't so misty out over the water today, you'd even be able to see it," she expanded further. "Man's only about five miles away in some spots. You can see their own coastline just fine when the visibility's good."

"Is there any way to get over there?" Hurricane asked eagerly.

"For an engine, you mean? Heh, not likely, unless you use a rail ferry. But even then, it wouldn't help much. They've got railways over there, but I think they're mostly narrow-gauge. Not much use for a big fellow like you."

"Yeah," Lorne added. "Better save yer gallivantin' for Sodor for now. Least y' got tracks y' kin use here and get back over on the Mainland if you want. Oh, and that guy comin' along right there on the other side? That's Duck. One of the regulars here."

All the humans left off talking at that point so Hurricane could aim a lusty whistle of greeting at the oncoming loco. The other engine, although clearly startled, whistled back at once, and Hurricane was pleased to note that he was a fellow tank engine as they chuffed past one another. As soon as Duck had gone by, Lorne spoke up again and told Hurricane not to be surprised if he saw yet another green tank engine on the line and that the other one was called Oliver and for pete's sake, not to mix them up.

"Also, don't let 'em get going about the blasted Great Western, especially Duck," Lorne warned in conclusion. "Both of them used to belong t' that railway and they'll bore the paint right off your boiler once they start talkin' about it."

"I'll remember, sir," Hurricane said, although he had a half-grin on his face even as he replied. It seemed as though there were lots of tank engines on Sodor, and boring or not, he wanted to meet with each and every one of them. After he got to see his steelworks friends up at that Ulfstead place, of course, for that too was gnawing at him. It was crazy, Hurricane thought. Less than a day into his new life as a North Western loco and already he felt the need to prioritize in his mind what it was he hoped to accomplish on a personal level. The most exciting thing he'd done in his shed over on the Mainland for the past month was count the number of cars driving to and from the big parking lot just outside the steelworks proper whenever the shifts changed.

Eventually they reached another sizable town with a station with multiple platforms and this time the humans set his brakes after stopping him and all four of them disembarked. They gathered next to his front so Hurricane could see them while they checked on him directly and continued offering him more information about his new home and work environment.

"And this is it for this particular branch line," said Denise, giving the big tank engine an approving pat. He still appeared perfectly cheerful and accepting of the massive change to his life which fate had dealt him and was trying hard to pay attention to what she was saying to him now and resist gawking about at his exciting new surroundings. Resilient indeed… It wasn't often she got one so eager to learn all that he could so very quickly. "The tracks we're on do carry on to one more station right in the middle of town and then over a bridge," she went on, "and then you'll be at the start of another brand new branch line they recently put in that runs up to a place called Harwick. You'll likely never have to go there, though. They mostly just run tourists up there."

"Yeah," said Lorne, "and in case you've bin wonderin', those real small tracks over there behind those retaining walls? Those belong to a whole separate railway that only uses those little shrimp engines."

"Lorne!" Denise exploded.

"Wot?"

"That is so rude! Shrimp engines!"

"Oh fer— Hey, it's not like I'm ever gonna say it to their itty-bitty faces. They'll never hear it."

"Hurricane's hearing it!" Denise pointed out, still stewing with righteous indignation.

"So? I bet he'll think the same thing I did first time I saw a mini—man, are those things shrimps or wot? Then he'll put it away and say hi all proper-like. Cause he's cultured, like me. Aintcha, Hurricane?"

The woman swung her disapproving glare onto the engine, was dismayed to see the start of a smirk creeping over his big face. "Hurricane!" she admonished.

"Huh? What?" he replied, confused as to which driver he should answer first now, at which point his need to make a decision was wiped away altogether when Mister Doyon and Mister Greene started laughing. Lorne just wound up laughing along and Denise turned her ire onto her own husband instead, declaring him to be an unsupportive and unsympathetic lout, before she too gave up and joined in the general hilarity. Once again, Hurricane was left somewhat adrift as to what part he'd played in their evident amusement, but he didn't mind. It was enough to be surrounded by people who liked engines and who looked at him with approval and appreciation.

"You guys are bad," Denise finally concluded, shaking her head and leaving it up to the individuals addressed to decide whether they were the ones meant to fall into the bad category. "Time for a tea, you think? Lorne? You still get three sugars? Creamed tea with one sugar for you, Pat?"

A pair of raised thumbs confirmed her queries and Denise went off to fetch all they'd need for a nice break. She had plenty of choice, too. The Arlesburgh West Station had expanded considerably in recent years when it came to servicing the local residents and visitors for it now bordered a popular promenade used by many people for everyday strolling whenever the weather cooperated. A fair bit of the trade the resultant shop row and station outlets saw nowadays came from people who dropped by without the slighted intention of even using the trains, although some attractive seating options did encourage customers to at least hang about for a while and watch them.

Hurricane's two crews hung about too, moving off to enjoy their own standing version of their teatime break once Denise returned and distributed the goodies and loitering about on the platform close enough to their engine to keep an eye on him. They could see quite a few nearby people staring at the tank engine as they tried to figure out who and what he was, and Hurricane did a lot of looking about on his own too, now that he'd been briefly left on his own, and seemed to enjoy what he saw. His expression remained entirely pleasant and his manner self-assured and attentive; in fact, given his attractive, predominately chestnut livery and uncommon configuration and size for any tank engine, he presented as a very appealing engine indeed, and Denise in particular found herself all the happier that she and Pierre had gone to the trouble of getting him freshly cleaned up before delivering him to Sir Topham Hatt. There was, as they said, only one chance to make a first impression, and she was glad to see Hurricane holding up his end of it very well so far.

Before long, the railfans amongst the visitors at the station couldn't take it anymore and came forward to take a closer gander at Hurricane. Lorne and Pat, who'd already scarfed through their sticky buns like rabid locusts, downed the last dregs of their teas as they watched and waited.

Even Hurricane appeared to have been waiting for just such a development. "Hullo," he said to the stranger he could see who'd edged closest to him, remembering what he'd just learned up at Vicarstown and hoping to encourage the man.

"Hello back," said the man. "I don't remember ever seeing you before. Who are you?"

"Hurricane, sir."

There was a bit of a puzzled buzz of conversation between several other onlookers. Since none of them knew anything about the engine's more recent past history, the name itself meant nothing to them. But then an older man, grey and stooped and better versed in railway history, suddenly came hustling up. He'd just come into the station to buy a sweet from his favourite food stall and had been so startled by the sight of Hurricane sitting at the platform that he'd almost dropped his change purse before he could stuff it back into his pocket, all thoughts of sugary delicacies forgotten.

"Oh my word," the older man exclaimed. "Is that…GER's A55? The Decapod?"

Lorne, grining now that the station cat had finally fled the platform, gashed the last remnants of his break and swung instantly into his own special mode to accommodate enthusiasts of all ages.

"Yessir, yer absolutely right," he replied, puffing himself up and walking over to join the well-informed older railfan and give the big red-brown engine a friendly thump on top of his buffer plate to reward his good manners. "This here's the Great Eastern Railway's A55 all right. Only now he's the North Western Railway's A55. Sir Topham Hatt bought him and had um brought in just this morning."

"Oh, this is splendid, just splendid!" the older man went on. He adjusted his glasses, peering more closely at Hurricane's wheels. "But he's meant to be…ten-coupled, isn't he? He has ten drivers? I'm not sure of what I'm looking at here."

"Aw, that's cause he's bin improved even more since he's bin built, sir. Pat! Ged over here and show this gentleman how they got Hurricane's wheels set up now. Just makes him even more special, if y' ask me."

Pat obligingly stepped in to lead the older railfan and several others who'd sidled ever closer in the meantime further back along Hurricane's side to explain how the engine's drive mechanisms had been rearranged to accommodate two independent arrays. Pierre and Denise just hung back and watched, still sipping their teas. They'd seen the pair in action before at the platforms, catering to fans who were asking them questions, and it was always the same. Lorne loved bragging up whatever locomotive he happened to be driving and Pat enjoyed droning on and on about said loco's technical aspects…would do so until even the most devoted of devotees was heartily fed up with the never-ending flow of facts and figures the slight fireman was capable of dredging up.

Best of all, Hurricane seemed to be eating it up and was behaving perfectly. There'd be no need to ask Lorne and Pat anymore if they wanted to take the new engine on once they got back to Knapford, Denise thought to herself. Hurricane and his new crew had already found one another.

Alas, their need to keep to some semblance of a schedule eventually intervened and Hurricane and his humans had to soon bid farewell to all the tank engine's new fans and carry on. To turn themselves around, they directed Hurricane all the way through Arlesburgh, intending at first to use the rail wye near the start of the Harwick line. But then Pierre remembered that a balloon loop had recently been added on a patch of unused ground next to the northbound track just past the wye and wondered aloud whether Hurricane mightn't be able to navigate the new addition, despite his size and ten drivers. The possibility, once considered, proved impossible to resist. Hurricane headed straight for the loop to give it a try…

…and had no difficulty whatsoever in rolling through it and switching over to the southbound line.

The tank engine's dual crews were delighted with him. They enthused about the advantages his upgrades had given him compared to the abilities of a bunch of other locos whose names he didn't know yet—tender engines for the most part, he gathered—all the while they hurried him back down the coastal branch line and over to Knapford Station again. Once there, they all disembarked and promptly enthused all over again about Hurricane's being able to negotiate Arlesburgh's new balloon loop to Sir Topham Hatt, who seemed likewise impressed. He even gave Hurricane a pat as he gazed up at him, smiling warmly as he absorbed his employees' very positive report on how things had gone, glad now that he'd acted somewhat on impulse and bought the big tank engine the instant he'd come up for sale.

"Hurricane was real good with the railfans while parked up at Arlesburgh West too, sir," Denise related happily. "There must have been a good forty or fifty people who came over to look at him just in the short time we were there."

"Is that right…" Sir Topham swung his gaze over onto Lorne and Pat. "How about that, Mister Paulson? Mister Greene? Is that something you'd like, minding Hurricane when he's on exhibit occasionally or even taking out the odd excursion train? I'm already assuming from your enthusiastic comments that you'd like to take him on as your regular working engine."

Lorne took his cap off and ran a hand through his brown hair to push his bangs up before jamming his hat back on to hold them captive. "Yessir. Mister Greene and I, we'd like that a lot," he said in an uncommonly humble tone.

"Done, then. Mister and Missus Doyon, thank you very much again for all your help today, and Hurricane, welcome again to the North Western Railway and the Island of Sodor. Your new crew will take you over to your new berth now and I'm sure we'll see you back here first thing tomorrow morning, bright and early, to pick up the orders for your first job."

A round of handshaking followed the Fat Controller's final words and he then stepped back to watch both crews climb aboard to ferry Hurricane away for his last trip of the day. Which lasted all of a minute. Hurricane had been assigned to the Knapford roundhouse.

Five pairs of engine eyes looked out and regarded the chestnut stranger as he approached the Knapford turntable for the first time. It was the biggest set of sheds Hurricane had ever seen in his life and the berths were huge…huge…but so were several of the residents already settled inside, the biggest engines he'd likewise ever seen. They also looked friendly, each and every single one of them. As friendly and welcoming as the humans who'd brought him here.

Hurricane began to smile as he was rolled forward onto the turntable and began to spin about. He'd found his peers.

to be continued...


	4. Part Four

HURRICANE

Part Four

The big A55 only lasted a short time that first evening, just long enough to learn everybody's name and get some sense of what they were and what they did before he began yawing uncontrollably. Justin, the streamlined blue engine immediately to his left, laughed at that and advised him that he'd better yield to the inevitable and get some sleep—he'd had such an exciting day, after all, and there'd be plenty of days ahead when they could all get to know one another after work. Hurricane, pleased as punch by how much he already liked all his new shed-mates, not only took Justin's advice, but slid into oblivion and started to snore so fast that the other engines found it rather comical. They continued chatting more softly after that, glancing from time to time at their slumbering new friend as they exchanged their quiet first impressions. Their overriding shared belief was that the newbie was going to fit right in. Since they'd additionally all observed how the humans handling him appeared to share the engines' assessment, Hurricane's future thus seemed bright and assured.

Or at least, it should have been. Hurricane's new crew came for him the next morning and got him fired up and underway without any problems whatsoever and all seemed hunky-dory. The big engine charged out of the sheds with a will, already wearing a smile, and Lorne and Pat were in fine form as they launched into an immediate running commentary to acquaint their new engine with all they felt he needed to know about his new digs and responsibilities. Hurricane's only regret was that the Doyons had already come and gone with their green engine, Henry, before he woke up; he was still feeling quite grateful for the kindness they'd shown him the day before and would have liked to have thanked them again before setting off. But then he remembered that they also drove the red engine, the German one, in the afternoons, so he'd likely see them in the evening. Thus mollified, he carried on, doing his best to pay attention, his smile broadening on occasion at what the two men in his cab were telling him.

Hurricane would have been even more pleased had he known that the Doyons had likewise been thinking of him that morning. Denise in particular had been pained by his initial fright and confusion when they'd first seen him the day before and was hoping very much that Hurricane would have a nice first day with his new crew. Historic rarity or not, he'd come far too close to being discarded. There simply wasn't much of a market for steam engines anymore, particularly large ones that used up a lot of coal and were difficult to maintain insofar as procuring spare parts was concerned. Hurricane was still out when they returned Adler to the Knapford roundhouse after his last job was done late that afternoon, but no worries. Denise and Pierre just hung about and gave Adler an extra good grooming while they watched for the tank engine to come back, curious to see for themselves how he'd made out.

It wasn't until the couple had begun to stow their cleaning utensils that Hurricane finally appeared, looking to retire for the night in turn. Lorne and Pat spotted the woman as she was walking past the front of the German engine while they were easing their own loco forward onto the turntable and started yelling at her at once.

"Hey! What kinda blasted brute did you lay on us!" Lorne shouted. "He attacked another engine and tried to derail him!"

"We just got chewed out by Sir Topham Hatt!"

"Yeah, first ruddy day on the job, too!"

Denise's mouth actually fell open. "What!" she exclaimed, horrified. Then she realized that her horror was perhaps premature because Hurricane's crew at that point lost it and started laughing themselves sick. Even the engine was wearing a smirky grin as he began spinning about to back into his berth, albeit a grin modified by a degree of embarrassment. It took awhile before the Doyons were able to get the full story out of the three of them. Hurricane just kept looking more and more sheepish as he offered up the odd, monosyllabic remark, and his crew of two grown human males kept breaking into childish giggles as they tried to relate what had happened.

The day had begun on an almost perfect note. They'd gone over to Knapford Station first thing and Sir Topham had actually come out of his office to admire his new engine and talk to his crew again, looking very proud as he did so. Thomas and Percy had shown up in the yard after that to get the morning trains squared away and had exchanged a round of very enthusiastic greetings with Hurricane, especially Thomas, who was seeing him for the first time since the whole steelworks incident over on the Mainland. Nobody standing nearby or riding in their cabs had minded the locos' excitement or their brief lapse in paying attention to their work. They just smiled tolerantly as the happy engines got their well-wishing and welcomes out of the way before they voluntarily reined themselves in and refocused themselves on business.

After that it was off to the Brendam Docks to start familiarizing Hurricane with one of the routes he'd likely soon know best and to make a quick courtesy run up to the China Clay Pits to ferry along a small string of empty company trucks which the clay pit engines had left in the dockyard and hadn't gotten around to retrieving yet. It was during the start of this small job that Lorne, Pat and Hurricane discovered that they all shared the same opinion when it came to troublesome trucks, which was to say, they had zero tolerance for their naughtiness. The clay pit trucks, related Lorne with way too much glee, had made the mistake of trying to give Hurricane some grief when they first saw him, an attempt which the engine had quashed instantly by reversing to bash them silly while growling, "Shuddup back there!" Problem solved… The trucks had behaved like little angels after that, the very picture of docile cooperation, and never once said another word. Even Bill and Ben, the China Clay Company's saddle tank engine twins, had been impressed, and Hurricane had again been delighted to meet and get to talk a bit with even more fellow tankers, both at the Clay Pits and at the docks. He definitely liked other tank engines. His fireman, Pat, ventured that he probably saw them all as his little brothers, an opinion which Hurricane himself did not dispute.

The afternoon was devoted to pulling yet another train of empties, this one far longer but again collected from the Brendam Dock sidings to take up to another site Hurricane would likely become very familiar with, the Blue Mountain Quarry off the Peel Godred branch line. This time the A55 didn't even have to do anything to his trucks to make them behave. He just got into position to look them over first and glare at them, and Hurricane with his brows drawn way down and an angry frown on his face could be a fearsome sight indeed, way too fearsome for the trucks to risk trying to give the huge chestnut stranger any lip. They followed him without a single peep or hitch while Hurricane had a grand time chuffing along and towing what for him was a light load he barely noticed, enjoying himself immensely as he looked about at all the pretty scenery and ran through a number of picturesque little stations. It was a very easy introduction to the sorts of jobs he'd be doing in the future and he liked everyone he saw—the narrow gauge engines he eventually met at the quarry proper quite fascinated him, in fact. Lorne and Pat were also happy, happy with their new charge and happy with the sort of engine he was turning out to be. They'd often wished they could somehow bash impudent rolling stock into submission themselves and now they had an engine who would do it for them using his own initiative, a huge bonus in their minds.

Then came the moment when Hurricane went just a wee bit too far. What happened was that on their way home, they ran up on something of a rail traffic bottleneck at one of the smaller stations. Small or not, the station still had three platforms and all three were currently occupied. The outermost stop was serviced by the mainline track, the same one Hurricane was currently using, and he found himself having to slow for what looked from behind like the squared-off hind end of a large black diesel engine.

Two more diesels coincidently appeared to be using the innermost platform, and in between them all sat the more rounded length of a steam loco. Hurricane rolled quietly forward, annoyed by the need to halt at all. The engine ahead of him seemed to be doing nothing but loitering at the platform. Ditto the pair using the innermost platform, both of whom appeared to be more colourful variants of the diesel right in front of him. Hurricane got set to give the engine ahead of him a good blast from his whistle if need be, to let him or her know that someone wanted to get past them.

But before he could, Hurricane came within earshot of what all the engines were saying to one another…and it wasn't anything good, not at all…

"—tle lady longfunnel, with her single special wheels. Why do you even need a long funnel for the widdle bit of steam you make to turn those wheels? It makes no sense."

"Yeah! No sense."

"No sense lady longfunnel!"

"Haw!"

"Hardy har!"

"Stop being so awful! As if any of you know anything about engine design!"

The distinctly feminine voice arising from the steam loco who was sandwiched between the diesels and being harassed was all it took to make Hurricane see red. He leapt forward at once, gaining momentum enough to make for a very satisfying bash into the black diesel's rear buffers, driving him several feet ahead.

"Apologize to the lady!" he demanded, his voice furious.

"What! Who!"

"Apologize to her!" Hurricane snarled again. "Or I swear I'll derail you!"

"No! Stop! Wait! Emily! I'm really, really sorry! I won't do it again!" the black diesel shrieked, and shot off, his suddenly subdued buddies slinking off just as fast behind him. Hurricane lunged forward again too. But not to chase the other engines, he just wanted to draw even with the dark green loco in the siding next to him. The instant he'd done so, he looked anxiously over at her.

"Gosh, are you all right, Emily, is it? That diesel didn't hurt you, did he?"

Emily stared back, quite dumbfounded. From her perspective, all she'd heard was a lot of sudden yelling, then Diesel had jumped ahead, screeched out a garbled apology and taken off like a scalded cat, taking his two nasty friends with him. Now here in his place was this stranger, another steam engine, regarding her with tremendous, obvious concern.

"I'm all right," she breathed, rather faintly.

"Thank goodness! Oh, I'm sorry! I should introduce myself. My name's Hurricane, like the storm! I used to live on the Mainland, but Sir Topham Hatt bought me so now I live here."

"I see..." Then something about his name twigged her. "Wait, I know you! Aren't you the engine that was at that steelworks?"

"Hyuh, that's me."

"Oh wow, I heard that you were coming to Sodor, but never expected to meet you like this! Thanks for helping me out."

"Glad I could. Do those diesels bother you a lot like that?"

"Not anymore," Emily replied, smiling, her usual cheerfulness completely restored. Hurricane beamed in response.

"Good-oh," he murmured, then briefly focused inward, most particularly on an insistent tapping on the inner wall of his cab. "Oops, look like I've gotta go. I think my crew wants to chew me out. It was nice to meet you, Emily. I hope we see each other again soon."

"I hope so too," she said, and watched as the new engine surged ahead on down the lines. She'd heard that he was large for a tank engine, and sure enough, he was the biggest one she'd ever seen. Even her own crew seemed impressed. They usually avoided getting involved in the engines' interactions and occasional bickering and spats as long as no one was getting hurt, but seeing the new guy send Diesel and his cronies packing…that they had to comment on.

"Cor, looks like y'got yerself a real nice new friend, Emily," her driver remarked. "About time one of you engines put that Diesel in his place."

"Yes… He won't get into trouble, though, will he? Hurricane, I mean?"

Her driver laughed. "Naw. Not really. Nobody likes Diesel when he's bein' a pain, not even Sir Topham Hatt," he said, and that, as far as he was concerned, was that.

Even though Lorne and Pat hadn't heard anything of what Emily's crew had said to her, they nonetheless wound up concluding much of the same, and the chewing-out Hurricane feared as they finished chuffing on to Knapford Station turned out to be barely a nibble. Even Sir Topham, who sighed as he listened in his office to a recounting of the incident between Diesel and Hurricane from Hurricane's own crew, couldn't muster up much disapproval let alone be angry with his new engine. All he wound up demanding of Hurricane was that he defer to his driver and fireman in the future rather than make snap decisions on his own; it was the job of humans such as himself to discipline truly bad behaviour, not the engines themselves after all. Hurricane had apologized profusely and promised he would never biff another engine again, not unless Mister Paulson or Mister Greene told him too. That generated a bit of a face-palm on Sir Topham's part and outright smirks from his crewmen, both of whom were safely standing behind the Fat Controller at that point. They also swore, as they finished relating the whole sorry tale to the Doyons, that they'd overheard Sir Topham Hatt muttering "of course it couldn't happen to a better engine" as he'd returned to his office, something which caused Denise in turn to intimately introduce her own palm to her eyebrows.

"Oh for… What did I say about not leading him astray? Hurricane, you realize you can't do this sort of thing again, right?" she said, looking up at the engine in question.

"Aw, lay off 'im," Lorne said. "He wuz just bein' chivalrous. I mean, if I ever saw some guys hasslin' a woman the way those diesels get after Emily sometimes, I'd be wading in to sort 'em out myself." He looked past Denise and at her fireman-husband, who'd just finished collecting the last of the supplies they'd used to tend to Adler. "Pierre! You know what I'm gettin' at, right? You'd clobber any guy who even tried to give Denise any trouble, wouldn't you?"

Pierre grinned. "I would and I 'ave," he replied.

"I would too," Pat spoke up. Then he added, rather mournfully, "Or I would if I had the goods."

Lorne grinned in turn and patted the smaller man on the head, "Hey, you've got the goods, little buddy. It's just that yer better suited for sneakin' up from behind and sucker-punching 'em in the kidneys."

"Yeah. I've done that. Heh heh. Heh."

"Heh heh heh!"

"All right, enough!" Denise exclaimed, although she had to work hard not to join in with the laughter. "It may be true that Diesel deserved what he got for once, but you're forgetting the human element. Diesel's got a driver aboard. What if he'd been hurt?"

The brief haze of testosterone in the air dissipated. Lorne pulled one corner of his mouth back, considerably sobered.

"Weelll, I gotta admit you've got a point, Denise. That driver's a jerk, the same as his engine, but still…"

He looked up at Hurricane. All four humans had by now clustered together to stand on his track right in front of him and the big tank engine was gazing back at them with great attentiveness, along with every other engine in the shed. They were all too well behaved to interrupt the crews' conversation, yet couldn't hide their fascination at listening in on such an unusual discussion. The humans normally didn't talk about the whys and wherefores of how they handled the locos right in front of them.

Lorne finally sighed.

"Okay, big guy. Guess we better stick to just yellin' next time, just to be safe. We don't need someone badmouthin' you and claiming you're out of control, especially not given you're going to have a lot of fans around sometimes."

"You can look mad, too," said Pat. "Like you did with the trucks."

"Yeah! Just put on yer angry face if ol' Diesel gets up to his tricks again, that'll scare him."

"If he even gets close enough to see it," Denise remarked, amused herself and pleased that the two men were becoming more sensible. "By the sounds of it, he'll do all he can to keep his distance from now on."

"Ha! Bet he will! You should have seen him scoot off, like a blasted bullet. Lord only knows what he and his driver thought ran into them. Something gigantic, probably."

"You will 'ave to let us know when you see dem snoop around, trying to peek," said Pierre, which set off a brief, fresh round of ribaldry, after which everyone finally settled down and turned back to finishing up with their respective engines. The other locos remained quiet and watched. Inside, though, they couldn't wait until the humans all left!

At last, the Knapford roundhouse was emptied of its working visitors and only its mechanical residents remained. Justin, the streamlined Canadian U4 berthed right next to Hurricane, was the first to break the silence.

"So. I for one am glad you did it," he stated.

"I am too!"

"He deserved it."

"_Ja! _You vere provoked."

Hurricane smiled as the flood of positive remarks kept coming, his faint feelings of guilt receding by the second. He still wasn't exactly sure why he'd felt compelled to leap to Emily's rescue—he'd just felt that he had to—and was very relieved that his impetuous deed was not going to alienate him from his new friends, both engine and human. And even Sir Topham Hatt hadn't seemed _too _mad when he'd spoken with him. It was more like he'd felt that he had to say something out of duty rather than any real personal anger. Hurricane could live with that sort of admonishment… It probably helped that Emily seemed to be a favourite and was well-liked by all his shed-mates, whereas not a one of them had anything good to say about Diesel or about his two cronies, who were called 'Arry and Bert.

"They used to give me a hard time too," Henry confessed. "It took me awhile to learn how to ignore them."

"Zhey work at the Sodor Ironworks, zhat 'Arry and Bert, where metal is broken up and melted down," said Francois, one of the other big Canadian engines. "I don't want to say what zhat really means, and I zhink zhey like their jobs too much. Zhey have not much feeling for other engines, especially steam engines. You avoid zhem too, Hurricane. Zhey are not good company."

"I will," Hurricane promised. He suppressed a shudder. The steelworks where he'd worked just a short time ago had its own huge furnaces, of course, and he knew all about what went into them. But they weren't a scrapyard. The high-quality metal they needed to melt down had always been brought in from elsewhere, already sorted and processed and cut to size for easier handling. Hurricane remembered seeing the odd obvious locomotive wheel go through—his own included when the steelworks fitters had replaced the ones he'd damaged while rescuing Thomas from a molten ore spill—otherwise, most of the scrap material shipped to his steelworks had been unidentifiable as to origin.

Hurricane redirected his focus back to the discussion at hand and soon settled in to enjoy the rest of the evening talking about much nicer topics, the one about which diesels on the Island were actually friendly and kind and deemed worth knowing among them…

to be continued...


	5. Part Five

HURRICANE

Part Five

The news that Diesel had been soundly bashed and sent packing by the newest addition to the North Western Railway's fleet spread through the Island's entire engine community like wildfire. Soon, everyone knew the story, or at least knew the distorted version which evolved as the gossip raged on. No matter which variant got passed on, however, Diesel was always cast as the villain of the piece—he hadn't earned his nickname of Devious Diesel without reason—and no one had any sympathy for him. Several engines who had strong opinions about how things should be done when it came to railway matters, Gordon and Duck among them, did feel that Hurricane had behaved in a rather uncouth manner by resorting to violence, but even they had to snicker inside when they envisioned Diesel fleeing for his life after being made to screech out an apology to Emily. Duck was likely the one enjoying the biggest secret laugh. Diesel had caused him a lot of grief once and the former Great Western tank engine still nursed a considerable grudge against him because of it.

The end and best result of his impetuous act was that Hurricane almost instantly became very popular with all the other steam engines, especially the smaller or more docile ones who'd been targeted by Diesel in the past. It also helped that Thomas was always eager to praise the big A55's more kindly qualities when asked about him—yes, he looked intimidating and he _could _be intimidating—but he was really a nice guy at heart, honest! James, the only other loco on Sodor who'd likewise interacted with Hurricane way been when, offered the same opinion. And if anyone didn't believe him, or Thomas either, James always added, then they were welcome to go up to Ulfstead Castle and talk to the other former steelworks engines who'd once worked with Hurricane and who now belonged to Sir Robert Norramby.

Hurricane, of course, was likewise very glad to be so well accepted. He was a social boy by nature, who'd taken his occasional bouts of isolation hard, and was always eager to please. Although he'd always enjoyed his scheming days with his best friend Frankie, back when he would have done almost anything to make her happy, her oft-repeated insistence that he never become too friendly with 'the help', as she categorized the hapless engines which the two of them managed to ensnare into assisting them, had always been the hardest of her directives for him to follow. It was all the more difficult for him when their temporary captives were fellow tank engines of any class. Hurricane was well aware that his build was unique and that he never had nor ever would have loco brothers and sisters. Frankie, he knew, was also somewhat rare, yet she never seemed to mind her relative lack of siblings the way he sometimes did, and because of it, Hurricane would on occasion feel drawn to befriend the very engines he was meant to be keeping in line. Thomas had been an especially hard one for him to keep at a distance, and in the end, of course, he couldn't; he'd forgotten all about Frankie's wishes the instant he'd seen the little fellow in real peril and leapt to his rescue without giving his own safety the slightest thought at all. Mercifully, he hadn't been the only thoughtless, selfless engine milling about the steel plant on that exciting, chase-filled day, and the loco who'd saved him in turn—Merlin—had even gone on to become his friend and workmate, and Frankie's, too!

Hurricane was also glad that virtually all the humans he met seemed to view him with the same approval as did the other engines. This was another thing he was missing—had always missed, in fact—the nebulous, almost wistful sense that he ought to be able to cultivate stronger bonds than he had with most of the crews he'd known over the years. They'd all been good in a technical sense, had driven and cared for him well enough, and a few had seemed proud of him and taken the time to speak kindly to him whenever he'd done something to earn their praise. But when the work was done, so too were his crews…done with him. He'd watch them walk off if he could and that was the last he'd see of them until they returned for their next shift. Hurricane hadn't even been sure what more he'd wanted from them, exactly, until he'd come to Sodor, and now he knew what it was that he wanted. He wanted their attention. The same amount of attention and interaction the other engines got from their crews, darn it!

Luckily, Hurricane seemed poised to finally achieve his wish. Lorne and Pat had already seen him at his worst, he supposed, and they hadn't been bothered by it at all. They still let him give the troublesome trucks and other naughty rolling stock the evil eye and the odd bash if his warning expressions didn't suffice and they still laughed whenever they recalled how he'd gone after Diesel. Henry, who'd known them since they'd first come to Sodor, was able to tell him a little more about his new crew. According to the green Stanier, both men had gotten into the railroading business only recently, after finishing up with their wartime army obligations during which they'd driven heavy machinery of some sort while fighting the Nazis. Whatever they'd done, it had left them with an aptitude for driving engines too, and they'd quickly determined that they liked working with living steam locomotives best and had moved to Sodor to continue doing so as soon as there'd been openings. They'd steadily worked their way up the seniority rankings on the spares list ever since and had even driven Henry a couple of times in the past. Whenever they did, they'd always done well by him, Henry added, although he had to admit that, as humans went, he personally found them a little…enthusiastic and noisy, as he politely put it. Hurricane just grinned when he heard Henry's assessment. Unlike the tender engine, he liked enthusiastic and noisy!

Asking lots of questions seemed a safe way to engage with his new crew while remaining respectful, Hurricane decided. They liked talking to him anyway and even more so enjoyed answering anything he asked of them. The give and take, with Hurricane's side of it always a little tentative at first, quickly deepened into real conversation. The big, unique tank engine and the two middle-aged human men were becoming friends, and Denise, who was always hovering about after her own workday was complete, would cast her eye over at the trio with increasing approval. She liked seeing the engines she especially favoured being well treated and being appreciated as personable, intelligent individuals in their own right. She was also glad now that Lorne and Pat had passed on taking on a couple of different available engines in the recent past and had chosen to instead wait for the one with whom they felt a real connection.

Approving or not, she still enjoyed ragging on them a bit too and was not above reminding them that Hurricane needed extra-special care because he was going to be a popular tourist engine who should always look his best, even if he was also a working engine. At first Lorne would mutter and gripe under his breath and maintain that Hurricane looked fine, just fine. But then Pierre got into it and made some comment about the tank engine's tatty coat looking dingy enough to put him in mind of a cow with loose bowels and so the rivalry was on!

Hurricane's driver and fireman began dragging out the wooden ladders and scaffolding routinely to set up in front of their engine so they could work on his face together and more easily access his rather narrow running boards. Even Hurricane was bemused by this development. He was quite used to having his face scrubbed with the same long-handled brushes that were used on his body and the suds being squirted away with a hose and wouldn't have minded if his new crew had done the same. But competing with the Doyons evidently required a more personal touch when it came to grooming and he instead got used to the men slapping on the soapy water and rinsing it away by hand, the whole of the operation punctuated from time to time by strings of voluble cursing whenever Pat or Lorne dropped a sponge or rag and had to climb back down to the ground to retrieve it. Sometimes the two men would get into little scuffles afterwards too, bumping each other with their hips while bickering and berating one another not to be so ruddy stupid and clumsy. Hurricane was a little alarmed by their behaviour at the beginning, but then began to realize that it was just their way. Their arguments invariably dissolved into giggles before the end and Lorne would sometimes tousle Pat's hair and Pat would retaliate by poking his big friend in the ribs, as if they were a pair of silly, high-spirited schoolboys who could only express their fondness for one another by goofing around. Hurricane was soon content to just relax and enjoy the extra entertainment whenever his crew tended to him in the sheds when their workdays were complete. The hands-on care was good for the big tank engine and it always brought out the lovely softness in his eyes.

It was sometime during this period that Hurricane finally encountered Diesel again. He came in and rolled to a stop at one of the Knapford Station platforms one morning, and parked only one other line over was the big black boxy diesel engine, waiting for permission to leave his own platform.

Hurricane was more than willing to let bygones be bygones and tried to make amends.

"Hey there, Diesel? No hard feelings, right? Sorry I had to bash you before, but what you were doing just wasn't right."

The other engine said nothing. He just kept staring straight ahead, his cheeks getting redder and redder until he got his signal to go and suddenly shot off, all in a rush. Hurricane looked after him, disappointed, a little hurt that his overture had been rejected.

He felt a human hand patting the inside front of his cab.

"Ah, don't worry about that," Lorne said to him. "We tried to apologize some to Diesel's driver the first time we saw him at the pub too."

"He did the exact same thing," added Pat. "Just got red in the face and left."

"Yeah, wouldn't talk t' us at all. Some guys, y' just gotta accept they ain't gonna be your friends, ever, Hurricane. Don't let it bother you. I know a lot of other engines like you, 'specially that Emily gal, I bet."

His crew's kind words cheered Hurricane right back up and he carried on for the rest of the day feeling very glad all over again that he'd been sold on to such a good home. Sodor really was a wonderful place for steam locomotives and he was more eager than ever to repay his new owners with as much hard work as was asked of him.

Hurricane soon got his opportunity to prove his mettle the very next time he was asked to pick up a special delivery direct from the Blue Mountain Quarry. There, a lot of variously shaped stones had already been precut and sorted for several specific projects and the loads had been wrapped and tied onto flatbeds instead of being placed into the usual trucks. Pat came forward to speak with Hurricane during the process of getting him coupled up to his train and told him that he was going to have to be extra careful with his freight that day because they were going to travel a fair distance and go up and down several steep grades; it wouldn't do to let the flatbeds knock together too hard at any point, which might damage the stones. Hurricane smiled and promised that he would treat his precious goods with as much care as if they were living riders. He'd been built to start heavy passenger trains and get them quickly up to speed after all and still remembered all the little tricks to make it a smooth journey. Then, off they went, with Hurricane looking ahead with keen interest. His crew wouldn't tell him what their final destination was, they just kept telling him that it was a surprise and that he'd soon see for himself.

Once back on the mainlines and just past Maron, Hurricane found himself being switched onto a branch line new to him. They soon entered a heavily forested area, and under the canopy of shading trees, the morning's cool early spring temperature dipped briefly into downright cold territory, then it rebounded again once they were out of the woods and back in the sunshine. A tiny unmanned station came up quickly afterwards and the trees thinned out into hedgerows bordering fields, and Hurricane could now see that their tracks were skirting a series of low rolling hills off to their right. There seemed to be a lot of tracks, too, for such a rural area. Their line split several times, yet his driver kept him heading in the same direction throughout, still carefully pulling his train of stones. They even crossed a road, several times, and then—

Hurricane suddenly sucked in his breath, hard. The rails beneath his wheels were leading straight towards yet another hill and there were some sorts of buildings on top of it…big, blocky structures with distinctive profiles. Ulfstead Castle? Could it really be?

"Is that Ulfstead?" he blurted, far too excited to restrain himself any longer.

The two men in his cab immediately became cagey and evasive again.

"Ulfstead? Ulfstead! We're supposed to be goin' to Arlesburgh!"

"No we're not. You said we're delivering those stones to London."

"London! Pat, you clot! Does that look like blasted London up there? We ain't even crossed the Channel to the Mainland yet."

"Whose fault is that? You're the driver, not me. Great job getting us turned completely around in the wrong direction."

And so it went on and Hurricane wasn't fooled in the least—indeed, their horsing around only convinced him that his assumption was correct. He steamed on eagerly, wishing he could speed up, yet too mindful of his driver's guidance to do so, not to mention that the ground beneath him was starting to lift up the closer they got to the hill right in front of him. Then his rails curved around onto a bed with a much steeper grade. He was climbing the hill now as only a locomotive could climb and had to be very careful to keep his top-heavy flatbeds moving just so lest they topple over. The slope was a long one and the higher they went, the better the view got, until he could see for miles around; even some of the coastal communities and the sea beyond were visible. Hurricane blew his whistle as loudly as he could, both to let his friends above (and _hopefully _they were there!) know he was coming and to warn any oncoming traffic behind the blind curve just ahead of him of his presence.

His arrival at the Ulfstead station proper was sudden and spectacular. The tracks he was using abruptly went level again, ran out of a brief patch of forest, and immediately began branching off into a multitude of additional through lines and sidings. The buildings he'd seen earlier from afar lay clustered together to one side of the plateau on top of the hill, close to the cliffs which had overseen his long climb. There were a few more buildings plus an expansive wilderness and parkland area on the other side, and the connecting rails which led there went past some proper elevated platforms which—

Hurricane again caught his breath. There were several engines sitting together at one of the platforms and their configurations looked to be, just had to be… And then Lorne was switching him over, turning him towards where the locos were parked, and setting him up to make the grandest, happiest, most well-timed delivery of his life.

The shouted greetings of his old steelworks friends as Hurricane rolled to a stop at his own platform just one track over were so loud that they almost drowned out his final warning whistle. They were here, really here, all three of them and all just as delighted as Hurricane was to finally find themselves reunited at last.

"Hurricane! Hurricane! Hurri—"

"So good to—"

"—waiting for you to—"

For long seconds, all was audible confusion as the excited engines succumbed to their emotions, their voices tumbling over one another as they expressed their elation and relief. All the humans present—Hurricane's crew, the estate workmen who'd been waiting for the quarry stones, several Friends Of Steam volunteers who'd been minding Merlin, Lexi and Theo—smiled as they witnessed the locos' ecstatic reunion. They all knew the story of how the engines had been split up and how close they'd come to oblivion and considered it a privilege to experience in small part such a happy ending for them.

Pat Greene, who'd disembarked to uncouple Hurricane from his flatbeds, came around in front of him then and asked him if he'd like to be moved before being left on his own for a time to take a break.

"What we can do is get you turned around before Lorne and I leave, so you and your friends can socialize more easily. You good with that, Hurricane?"

Good with it? He was overjoyed! As soon as his fireman was back aboard and he was given his cue to move, Hurricane near lunged ahead, so excited that when they chuffed about the estate's Dinosaur Park to get turned around, he never paid the slightest bit of attention to the attraction's hulking animatronic inhabitants. All he wanted was to see his friends again, really see them and have time to talk with them. As promised, he soon wound up in the exact same place at the exact same platform as before, but turned about now in the opposite direction. The experimental engines looked happily back at him. They were just as grateful to Hurricane's crew as he himself was for their thoughtfulness in repositioning him before they set off to the castle courtyard for a well-deserved lunch.

Since the big A55 was now off duty and there were no rail enthusiasts about at the moment to require attention, all four locos now felt free to continue their conversation, in a somewhat more coherent fashion. Hurricane quickly learned that part of the reason he'd been so abruptly left on his own up at the steelworks plant was that Sir Robert Norramby had had to purchase the experimentals in haste. The plant manager had been completely unwilling to retain them onsite once they'd quit working and they really had been slated for an unfortunate end had a buyer for them not stepped up almost immediately. Hurricane, the manager had been willing to hang onto longer, once promised a buyer for him too, but he certainly hadn't gone out of his way to pass on any such information at the time, as the tank engine knew all too well to his regret. It was all too typical of how many people not directly involved in the railway industry interacted with locomotives, he thought. Living or non-living, he and the others were just machines to such folk, and one had no reason to ever need to reassure a machine, now did they?

"We didn't even make it all the way to Ulfstead at first," Merlin continued. "We lived at the steamworks while they maintained and painted us and they finished laying in some of the new rail lines and started building our roundhouse here at the estate."

"It was too cold. Still frozen. Frost in the ground. They couldn't pour the foundations," said Lexi.

"But then it got warm enough and they installed our turntable and the framework and the roof."

"No walls yet, though," Theo expanded. "We joked for a while that we all had rooms with a view."

"A cold, windy view! You're lucky you had a warm proper shed to wait in until you were brought over."

Hurricane contemplated Lexi's comment. They don't know, he thought. They didn't realize that he'd believed that they'd all been dead and that he himself was next on the scrapping list. He decided on the spot never to tell them about his misconception. Lexi, Merlin and Theo were all soft-hearted engines and knowing that they'd been the cause of a lot of misery for him, however indirectly, would only dismay them in turn.

"It was okay. Kind of lonely, though," he said.

"I'm not surprised. None of the humans there were really all that friendly. Did you hear any more about Frankie? She'll likely be back at work with those four new diesels by now, won't she?"'

"Probably." To change the subject, Hurricane asked, "What about you three? Do you get to work at all, or…?"

"Oh! Work!"

To his surprise, the three of them laughed…hearty, self-depreciating laughter.

"We've been working like crazy!" Lexi enthused in response to his query. "Ever since they could work the ground, Merlin and I have been bringing in all sorts of goods trains full of things to finish up. Mostly we go up north to pick them up so maybe that's why we haven't seen you. And Theo, he's become our ballast specialist. The little engines bring that in and then he pulls the trucks around for the work crews to use up."

"Oh, and the soil and mulch too, heh. Those are my side specialties."

"There'll be lots of plants and gardens later too, but it's still too early for that. This is the first day it's been warm enough just to paint so that's why we're all out here this morning. Everyone's too busy trying to get our sheds done while they can to want to do anything else. Look look look at the nice job they're doing!"

Hurricane did look. What he saw only a short distance away was a brand new roundhouse, similar to yet not quite as large as his own, with five berths and a giant turntable. Sure enough, men were virtually swarming the building, some inside and some outside, most of them up on ladders and scaffolding and all were plying a small army of brushes and rollers and painting away. There was a separate single shed off to one side too, already done up with a dark brown preservative stain on the walls and ceiling within, its exterior finished a bright green with cheerful yellow trim. Shiny, scarce-used rails connected it all and Hurricane did a bit of a double take when he first looked at the new tracks for they seemed off in some way. Then he realized that they were dual-gauge tracks, and that even the rails he currently sat upon were dual-gauge as well. His belated awareness opened up a whole new world of sudden possibilities in the big tank engine's mind and besides, hadn't Lexi just said something about little engines? Despite himself, he couldn't help taking a quick, excited look around at that point, hoping to spot a narrow-gauge loco.

Theo chuckled, misinterpreting what it was that had briefly distracted Hurricane.

"It's just the three of us living in the roundhouse so far, heh heh," he said. "Me and Merlin and-and Lexi of course."

"Stephen and Glynn stay up by the castle," Merlin added helpfully.

"Oh, and Millie! Almost forgot about her. She's the one who shunted us over here this morning. She has her very own little shed, too."

"Yes, her own teeny tiny little shed," Lexi chimed in. "Petite. Miniscule. Infinitesimal. Not anything any of us could fit into." Her voice comically dropped an octave. "Not even you, Theo."

"Heh, well, no. I'd derail first."

Hurricane, listening in on their banter, perked up. Derail…the wrong rails, he thought. Millie had to be a narrow-gauge engine! He almost asked about her, but then Lexi went off again about all the new paths the workmen were planning on constructing next to their own tracks and overlooking their roundhouse and wash-shed and he became completely absorbed by her happy, sing-song voice. He'd always liked listening to Lexi just as he'd always liked listening to Frankie, and his cab-forward friend looked so pretty now. All her rust and dings and dents were gone, and her exterior made pristine again beneath a fresh gleaming coat of paint which replicated her original pale turquoise and golden-yellow livery. Merlin and Theo also looked to have been freshly repainted, although neither could match Lexi's colours for sheer flamboyance, and it did Hurricane's iron heart good just to look at them all. Whoever this Earl was who now owned them, it was clear that he at least intended that they be properly cared for and housed well—a very reassuring notion indeed.

A little party of railfans showed up at that point to look at and talk to Lexi, Merlin and Theo and were delighted by the added bonus of getting to see the one and only GER A55 parked only one platform island over, even if said platform was still a work in progress and thus technically not yet open for public use. Still, the engine himself was in an excellent position to be viewed and he was friendly enough to call over his own greetings without prompting. The other experimental engines, who'd cut their conversation short in order to better concentrate on their visitors, watched the exchange with pleasure. It hadn't taken long at all for them to start enjoying all the attention paid to them by so many people who truly appreciated their unique aspects and they were glad to see that their former workmate was already of the same mindset.

And then something even more wonderful happened. Hurricane was distracted anew by a loco's whistle, and when he looked down the track ahead of him, he could see yet another steam engine towing a short train in the process of switching over onto the through track that ran past the other side of his platform. A dark green, very familiar engine…

"Emily!" he cried.

It was her! And she was stopping, almost up even with him. Hurricane couldn't believe his luck! Ever since the Diesel incident, he'd chuffed past her a few times on the mainlines and had exchanged whistles with her each time, of course, but he'd never actually gotten the chance to talk to her again.

"Oh wow! It's you!" Emily exclaimed back as she came closer, sounding just as excited as the A55. "Hi, guys!" she yelled over next at the experimental engines and for the next minute, all else was lost in another confused muddle of similar greetings returned by several different voices all at once. Obviously, she was already familiar with Hurricane's old friends and that made him even happier, to think that she'd been getting the lowdown on him all along from locomotives who he knew would speak well of him.

Emily's own crew finished parking her on the opposite side of the platform island from Hurricane and she waited for them to reset her pressures and throw on her brakes before she spoke again. The wait didn't stop her smiling, though.

"I'm so glad to finally see you again," she said to Hurricane, resuming their conversation. "It's about time you got up here."

"I know! Are you all right? Those rotten diesels haven't still been bothering you, have they?"

Emily just laughed. "No! And I doubt they ever will. Your friends have been telling me that you were real nice to work with over on the Mainland, too. You always looked after them and made sure they were safe."

"Oh. Um. I guess." He glanced over at Lexi, Merlin and Theo, all of whom had big goofy grins plastered on their faces. Lexi waggled her eyebrows suggestively at him. "Frankie and I were just so glad to have some real help at last."

"Help. Right," Emily said, and laughed again.

The engines' pleasure over being reunited put even the humans tending to them in a good mood, it seemed, for the older woman in charge of the Friends Of Steam volunteers called over to Emily's crew at that point, to tell them that Hurricane's crew had already gone up to the castle to pass the time while his flatbeds were fully unloaded and to get some lunch.

"We're keeping an eye on Hurricane for them until they're back," she concluded. "If you like, we can watch Emily for you too if you want to leave for a bit."

"Oh yeah?" Emily's driver remarked. He turned his head aside for a brief conference with his fireman. "Okay, done!" he decided. "Emily, girl? You good with being on your own awhile? The Steam folks over there kin keep an eye on ya and you can have a nice talk with yer friends while we're gone."

"I'd like that, sir," she replied, beaming.

"Perfect." He patted her fondly and waited for her fireman to finish banking her fire before both men quit her cab and began marching off across the concrete walkway intersecting all the tracks between them and Ulfstead Castle proper. Like Hurricane's crew, they knew there was always a tent kitchen in full swing up by the courtyard whenever the estate was open to the public and meals for any of the Island's railway employees were free for the asking as a special courtesy, although most paid anyway as a means of donating to Sir Robert Norramby's many causes, his up-and-coming railway museum among them.

Their departure put Emily on standby insofar as her job was concerned, and since neither she nor Hurricane were technically on public display and didn't need to watch for visiting enthusiasts, the emerald green Stirling and chestnut A55 felt free to talk at length after that and finally become acquainted with one another in the way both wanted. Hurricane had seen and met other Stirlings of her type before in the past and had always thought them smart, distinctive-looking engines with good work ethics and friendly dispositions. Emily was no different and soon proved that she could be just as jolly as Lexi, albeit without the cab-forward's tendency to chatter inanely when she became over-excited. She and Sir Robert's new engines had actually been seeing a lot of each other, she told Hurricane. With the bare-bones work of laying all the new tracks, pouring the new platform island and other concrete work, and building the new sheds and putting in the turntable done at last, it was time to start prettying everything up, and bringing in the supplies to do just that necessitated many, many deliveries. A lot of the goods had and were being brought in by rail, hence Emily and Hurricane's current jobs, but Merlin, Lexi and Theo were doing their share too. The Earl of Sodor liked to see his engines out working, Hurricane learned. Even old Stephen—Stephenson's Rocket—who was very valuable and kept up in the castle's courtyard, got to pull passengers and go off the estate grounds on short trips and was always kept in perfect running order. Hurricane perked up when he heard that. It reminded him of what some of the first people he'd gotten to know on the Island had told him.

"I guess I'll be doing the same, sort of," he said. "I'm supposed to be a working engine, but I'll be loaned out here for shows and such, I think. At least that's what some of the humans said to me."

"So we'll still get to see you, no matter what. Yay!" Lexi enthused.

"Yes, you're so lucky, Hurricane," Emily agreed. "You get to work and also get to show yourself off and be admired just for being handsome. I wish I could do that."

Hurricane wished she could too. He loved the idea of being on display with Emily next to him because she was just as pretty as Lexi and he just liked looking at her in addition to enjoying her company. He hoped she thought he was handsome and hadn't just said it to be polite and meaning that other people might think he was good-looking, not necessarily herself.

Alas, even a perfect spring day had to end, and Hurricane's crew eventually returned to move him on to his second job of the day, a lumber pickup to ferry on up to Vicarstown. The estate workmen had emptied all their flatbeds in the meantime and lashed the tarps back down for travel, and after a quick backwards spin about the Dinosaur Park again, the big tank engine was in position to retrieve his now much lighter short train and carry on. He didn't even regret too much having to bid farewell to his friends, both old and new. They'd had more than enough time to have a really wonderful talk and getting to know Emily had been such a splendid bonus. He wondered if his crew had known that she'd be coming up to the estate grounds at about the same time he had, and decided that the answer was probably 'yes'. Most of the regular crews that drove them knew each other well. Lorne and Pat were nice enough that they'd likely coordinated their job to mesh with one scheduled for Emily on top of finally fulfilling his desire to get up to Ulfstead to see his experimental friends.

Hurricane again felt very lucky and grateful for having been sold on to work on such a good railway and chuffed on with fresh commitment, determined to do his very best and work his very hardest, always.

The lumber they were meant to collect was being kept at the same place where it had been milled, a very large yard set back some off the mainlines with its very own connecting tracks and a wye. The new train was already waiting for them in a siding as they pulled up, packed aboard a long string of additional flatbeds, all of them piled high with strapped-down pallets of boards and heavy timbers, with a brake van and bored-looking guard attached to its end. Before Hurricane could undergo the maneuvers necessary to start coupling up, though, a foreman came running up to address his crew.

"Those empty beds you're already pulling," he asked. "D'you have some special place you've got to drop them or summat?"

"Naw. We wuz plannin' on leaving 'em at Vicarstown, same as your stuff," Lorne answered.

The foreman clapped his hands together, almost doing a little jig of excitement.

"Oh, lovely! Listen, is there any chance we could get you to let us use those empties to load up another, smaller order? We're just about done putting together the last pallet and I'm sure we could get everything put aboard and secured in about half an hour." He paused to look at Hurricane himself. "Presuming it's not too much trouble or too much for your engine, that is."

"This engine," said his driver, "could pull a mountain." He smiled, pleased to be in a position to extend a favour. "Go ahead and load up as much as y' want. It'll just save us or someone else comin' back for it later on, in my mind."

And so, Hurricane, Lorne and Pat settled in for another break, the men sitting nearby on a handy bench while they enjoyed some thermos tea and watched the lumberyard work gang and a talented manual crane driver bust their butts swinging the heavy skids up and onto the newly available flatbed space. It took a bit of juggling, but they eventually got everything to fit, and now there were _two _trains for Hurricane to back onto and collect and integrate into one. Even though it was the heaviest goods job he'd had to pull since coming to Sodor and a tricky one to boot, due to its unexpected length, the big tank engine, as promised, managed it just fine. He'd heard the pride in Lorne's voice when he'd made the comment about him pulling a mountain and that alone, knowing that his driver had such confidence in him, seemed to lighten the weight behind him significantly.

Accommodating the lumberyard folks and taking the extra load did make for a slower trip up to Vicarstown than originally anticipated and they were thus quite late in returning to the Knapford sheds that evening, the last engine back, in fact. Hurricane didn't mind, and he didn't mind that his crew left him on his own more quickly than usual either. He'd had an absolutely wonderful day and knew that he'd performed well and pleased everyone he'd met, which satisfied him on multiple levels. He'd even beat the worst of the fog that had started drifting in from the nearby sea, a fog sowing plenty of intermittent drizzle and shredding the last of the day's warmth as it thickened and soon engulfed the little coastal town. The twilight deepened rapidly after that into full dark. The night lights on their roundhouse and in their yard came on. Hurricane still just sat, blinking occasionally as the mists tried to condense on his eyes, feeling sleepy and disinclined to say much to his shed-mates even though he had a lot to tell them. The others weren't talking much either. Dense fog always seemed to have such an effect on engines. It almost seemed at times to act as a natural soporific on them, as long as they were sitting idle and safe and didn't have to pay attention.

A little party of human figures began to coalesce out of the fog, walking out in front of the sheds from the station side of the yard. Hurricane watched them, still feeling drowsy, thinking at first that they must be yard workers seeing to some routine matter or other. But then more details became apparent and the A55 became instantly alert when he saw one of the figures take on the unmistakable features and profile of one Sir Topham Hatt. His owner was accompanied not by workmen or even his aides, but by several men in civilian garb, an older, severe-looking woman wearing elaborate furs, and—most surprising of all—Missus Denise Doyon!

The group went right past him and Henry too and stopped in front of the German engine, Adler. A tense moment of silence followed. Hurricane could see that Adler was awake and looking at the humans and that they were looking back at him, yet no one would say a word. Then one of the strangers, the older of the civilian men, stepped forward and he did speak, a quiet, almost plaintive short phrase uttered in a language Hurricane couldn't understand.

The tension became unbearable. Adler suddenly gasped.

_"__Ach! Herr Dornwirth!" _he cried wildly, and to the astonishment of every other engine in the shed, he began to sob.

to be continued...


	6. Part Six

HURRICANE

Part Six

Adler's startling reaction to what one of the shed visitors had said to him so spooked the other engines in the roundhouse that for a time they froze up and became quite anxious on his behalf. It wasn't until the two male civilians plus Missus Doyon actually climbed up onto the German engine's foremost running board and began stroking his face and quietly speaking to him and they saw Adler smiling through his drying tears that their upset began to fade. Even then they remained subdued and confused. None of them could understand a word of what the human trio and their shed-mate were saying to one another and Sir Topham and the older woman had moved away out of earshot. Hurricane was perhaps the most baffled of them all. He only recognized Sir Topham Hatt and Missus Doyon. The others at least knew the identity of the fur-clad woman standing and waiting with the Fat Controller.

After a while, the people talking to Adler got back down and the whole little party left the yard, vanishing back into the fog. A long period of silence followed. Adler looked drained and contemplative, but then he'd always had spells when he'd appear pensive and a little sad; like Henry, he tended towards introspection. The other engines began glancing at one another. Their residual anxiety was now all about wanting to know what had just happened and each was hoping someone else would assume the risk of making the first query.

Justin was the one who finally took the plunge. "Er, Adi? Are you all right?" he asked.

To everyone's relief, Adler's only response was to sigh…a long, long, neutral sigh.

"I am, _ja_. Zank you," he said.

"Did you know those humans?" Henry asked next. His tone was timid, almost respectful, and it seemed to stir the red engine into becoming more communicative.

"I know zem, yes. Very, very vell. Zey are my crew, from before. Erich _und_ Dieter Dornwirth. I did not even recognize zem at first. I vas sure it vas a dream."

"Erich and… The same people who were in Germany with you, before you came here?" said Justin. "But you were in the Russian Sector, weren't you? The part that became East Germany? I thought they weren't allowing their citizens to leave anymore."

"I zink it too. But Missus Beauchamp, she help. I do not know how…"

Hurricane, who was listening in avidly, was more bewildered than ever. Why can't the citizens leave? Who's Missus Beauchamp? he found himself wondering, then realized that Missus Beauchamp had to be the woman who'd stayed with Sir Topham Hatt. The other part he couldn't explain to himself yet. He only understood the broad strokes of how the humans organized themselves; political subtleties were beyond him.

Adler was getting agitated again too. He was thinking over how Erich Dornwirth, his former driver, had stepped forward almost like a ghost materializing out of the fog and how he'd sadly asked, "Don't you know me anymore, Adler?" That was what it had taken for the dam encasing his memories to burst. "Pleez. I am sorry," he continued on. "I must zink over vhat happen for myself now. I tell more later. But not now."

"Of course," Justin assured him gently. "We'll leave you in peace until you're ready. I'm just glad that it's a good thing, what's happened...I assume it's good."

"_Ja ja, _it is. A shock for me, a hard shock. But _gut_ too."

"All right then."

At which point the German engine fell back into brooding silence, leaving the others to make what they could of his sparse comments. Justin looked around. He could see that Francois, his Canadian colleague, was handling the disruption just fine, but the remaining engines still appeared unsettled. Justin didn't like it. He much preferred to live in a harmonious shed, where everyone could rest and socialize in peace and without conflict, and what had just happened was a threat to their harmony, however inadvertently it had been dealt.

He fixed his attention on the big tank engine sitting two berths over. "Hurricane! You came in rather late this evening. That wasn't due to any delays or problems, I hope."

"Huh? No. No delays, not any that weren't planned. It's just that we had to wait at the lumberyard while they added more flatbeds to my train—loaded the flatbeds I was already pulling, I mean—and that slowed us down en route to Vicarstown."

"Why were you already pulling flatbeds?" Justin prompted. "Was that from another job?"

"Hyuh, I guess! I took a lot of stones up to Ulfstead in the morning."

"Ulfstead!" Henry echoed. "So you finally got to see your friends? Lexi and Theo and Merlin?"

"I did! And then Emily showed up too!"

Hurricane rattled on at length after that and told the other engines all about his happy, busy day, even the part about how his crew had teased him about his destination being London. His cheerfulness lifted the gloom that had briefly descended on the roundhouse (although it could do nothing to lift the fog), and by the end of it, even Adler was listening in and looking more chipper. Everyone was glad for Hurricane, and later, when the engines were ready for some real sleep, they were all back to feeling good and being their usual selves.

The next morning, Hurricane woke up to the feel of his crew already in his cab and firing him up and he was happy to see that the fog was retreating fast beneath a clear, brightening sky. As usual, Henry was already gone on his Kipper run and the three Canadians, surprisingly, were all being fired up as well. Justin could see that Hurricane was curious about all the activity and explained that he and his colleagues were going up to the steamworks that day for maintenance assessment.

"Guy will likely get a new paintjob out of it eventually too," Justin concluded. "He did a lot of hard plowing this past winter…_n'est-ce pas, _Guy?"

"_Ouais, et j'ai aide avec ce blizzard aussi. __Sur le continent._"

"He even plowed over on the Mainland," Justin translated. "Remember that big blizzard that hit up north right after New Year's? The Fat Controller wound up loaning out Guy for a week to help clean up that mess. He's a lot stronger than most Mainland engines plus he's got the equipment you need for the really heavy drifting. You know that giant black V plow we've got stored at the back of our shed, the one that's just about as tall as me? That's the one Guy brought with him to the Mainland, his driftbuster plow."

"_Je croyais etre de retour au Canada._"

"He thought he was back in Canada."

"Whoa!" Hurricane exclaimed, impressed and a little excited by the thought of the huge freighter plunging through snow as high as himself. "Maybe I can plow next winter too."

Both Justin and Francois laughed at that one.

"Say that anywhere near Sir Topham and he'll get you outfitted on the spot," chuckled Justin. "Most of the engines here don't like plowing at all. If you volunteer, you _will_ get to plow."

"I'll do it then!" said Hurricane, and immediately being hoping that his crew had just been listening in and wondering whether they'd share his keenness to give snow plowing a shot once it got cold again.

The engines' conversation filled up some of the time they still needed until their steam came up and they went quiet again as their time to depart the sheds approached and they shifted their focus onto their crews instead of one another. Only Adler had contributed nothing, nor did he appear to have anyone tending to him yet. The others glanced at the 48, hoping that he'd say something before they left, but he never did. Whatever it was that Adler was brooding over, they'd have to wait a while longer before he'd share.

Hurricane ran goods trains between the Brendam Docks and Vicarstown that day, going and coming twice before all the freight eventually intended for delivery over on the Mainland and the incoming materials meant for export via ship had been redistributed to their proper locations for further attention. All four trains were heavy and long and Lorne and Pat were especially meticulous about keeping him in full steam and at his peak strength throughout and taking on fresh coal and water and ensuring that he had a little rest at the end of each run. It was the sort of thoughtful care which every working engine appreciated and Hurricane took on each phase of his all-day job with good cheer and enthusiasm as a result, which endeared him to his crew in turn. The big tank engine also liked that the two men remained close to him when they took their breaks, aside from when they went off for a sit-down lunch. Both of them were obviously popular with the other railway workers and seemed to know almost everyone, and Hurricane enjoyed the opportunity to just sit and listen in on their socializing whenever they gathered together in little groups for a few minutes to chat and exchange the latest gossip. Some of the workers hadn't seen Hurricane close up yet and he liked that part of it too, that they wanted to look at him and even talk to him and that his driver, Lorne, always stepped up to introduce him.

While waiting at the Vicarstown goods yard for the second time to pick up their fourth and last load, Hurricane got even more than he could have hoped for when yet another rail worker new to him came hustling up. This time the stranger and his crew fell into a paroxysm of enthusiastic greetings, including manly hugs and back-slapping. An old friend, the engine guessed, already smiling with vicarious pleasure as he watched the reunion. A friend whose name turned out to be 'Iggy'.

"I saw you lot pull in earlier today, but was too busy to get over. They told me you'd be back, though," Iggy said, then stood back some to take in Hurricane. "So this is him, is it? Your first full-timer?"

"He's the one, yup. Used to be just GER's Decapod, but got renamed Hurricane somewhere along the line. One of a kind, either way," Lorne related proudly.

"Geeze, he's big for a tanker! I thought you two were barmy passing up that Canuck freighter, but can see now why you waited. It's gotta be fate that you wound up with him. Two old tank drivers with the UK's biggest-ass tank engine, what are the odds?"

The man's last statement suddenly sank in and so startled the very loco in question that he voiced his surprise aloud without thinking.

"What's that?" Hurricane exclaimed. "Old what?"

The trio regarded him tolerantly.

"Didn't your crew ever tell you they're veterans?" Iggy asked back. "Both of these old sods used to drive tanks for the Regiment. They fought in North Africa and then in Europe, after D Day, wasn't it?"

"Hell, yeah. Pat and I, we got landed at Gold Beach, and we wuz still together when we finally crossed that ol' Rhine River."

"I didn't know," said Hurricane, his brief astonishment already sliding over into admiration. So _that _was what Henry had meant about his crew once operating heavy equipment! "Gosh, thanks awfully! For fighting for us and England, I mean."

Lorne held up a dismissive hand. "Eh, old history. We're just glad we got through it in one piece. Iggy here, he's an old tank man too. Not bright enough to drive, though. He just fired the guns."

That opinion instigated one of the brief scuffles which Hurricane knew his crew liked to get involved in now and then, except that this time it was the three men aiming the cuffs and digs at one another. Eventually, Lorne had to go retrieve his cap from where Iggy had thrown it two tracks over before an oncoming shunter ran it over and things calmed back down. But the memories remained, and Hurricane felt quite proud of the two men in his cab while they completed their final run that afternoon. He remembered overhearing a lot about how fierce the fighting had been in Africa during the War and about how heroic everyone who'd taken part in the D Day landings and the drive afterwards to liberate Europe had been.

The hard work and new discoveries about his own crew's background so absorbed Hurricane that he forgot all about Adler and his own strange visit until he entered the very yard housing his shed. As soon as he caught sight of the turntable and berths beyond, he did remember and he looked eagerly for Henry, thinking that Missus Doyon might have told the Stanier all about what was going on with Adler and that Henry could now pass it on.

To Hurricane's disappointment, his green shed-mate was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Adler himself. The Canadians were back, though—all three of them—and they watched while Hurricane's crew gave their engine a quick once-over and then left for the evening.

"Where's Henry? He's kind of late, isn't he?" Hurricane asked the others at large.

"Henry's not coming in tonight, or any other night," Justin replied. "They moved him back to Tidmouth this afternoon."

"No! Don't say that. Why'd they do that?"

"Ze Tidmouth sheds are always Henri's home first," Francois added. "He was only here because Denise and Pierre look after him and drive Henri and Adi both. Now zhey don't have to anymore."

"Aw, geeze…" Although Hurricane was already glad for Adler's sake that he was going to be reunited with a crew which he gathered that the German engine had been very fond of back in his homeland, he hadn't considered what it would mean for Henry and his relocation saddened him. "That's too bad. I barely even got to know him. He seemed like a really good guy. And I'll miss seeing Mister and Missus Doyon. They were real nice to me, nicer than most humans."

Justin smiled in an understanding way.

"They _are _very nice, and still about the best crew I've ever known," the Canadian U4 said. "They used to drive me back in Canada, you know."

"Really?"

Actually, Hurricane hadn't known. He regarded the other engine with considerable surprise, which only escalated when Francois, the Royal Hudson, spoke up in turn.

"Zhey drive me too, before zhey work with Justin. Zis was some years ago, when zhey live in ze West, when I ran ze rails on ze prairies and through ze mountains. I always enjoyed working with zhem."

"Oh. So you're…you must've been real glad when you came here and saw them again, huh?"

"More than you know," Justin said, more soberly. "Francois and I, we were both on the shortlist for scrapping when Sir Topham Hatt purchased us. We've never asked, but we're sure they had a hand in selecting who it was that got chosen and shipped over. Mister Christophe Pelletier, the engineer who came over with us...he helped too. He found and got Guy taken off the end of a scrap train due to pull out the very next morning, that's how close Guy came."

"Geeze…"

Hurricane shifted his rapt attention to the big Northern engine at the far end of the roundhouse. As usual, Guy was following their conversation without contributing much; he didn't speak English very well. He certainly understood what they'd been talking about, though, for on this occasion he was able to muster up a few heavily accented phrases of affirmation.

"Is true. _Monsieur _Pelletier save me. Ver' good man," he said.

Hurricane retreated into his own thoughts for a moment. "I guess…I came close too," he finally ventured. "Pretty close…" He cast his gaze over at Adler's berth, which was still empty. The German engine was likely still cruising around, helping to show his newly acquired old crew their new railway's layout. "Not as close as Adi, though, by the sounds of it. Or you guys."

Another spell of silence fell over the sheds. Being unwanted and sent away to the scrapyard was every locomotive's worst fear. But there was comfort, too, in sharing their apprehension.

The topic, plus the sudden loss of Henry from their complement, also put Justin in a philosophical mood, or at least as philosophical as it got with engines.

"We're a roundhouse full of locos who've come close," he mused on. "Even Henry…he didn't have a particularly good start in life. A bad steamer… He used to fear being sent away because of it for years. Somewhat luckily, as it turned out in the end, he finally suffered a bad enough accident that he was sent off to Crewe to be repaired and properly rebuilt for good and that solved most of his physical issues. He still worries, though. You might have noticed that he's not the most optimistic sort. It wasn't until he saved Sir Topham's granddaughter Bridget's life that he finally relaxed and began to think that maybe he wouldn't be sent away on the slightest pretext after all."

"Wait. What? Henry did what?" Hurricane exclaimed, startled.

"He saved Bridget's life. You remember that big storm that blew through from the east a couple of years ago, the North Sea Tempest, I think they call it?"

"Yeah!"

"Bridget, she get sick zhat night, just before it come," Francois said, picking up the story. "She have to go to ze Vickerstown hospital fast and ze weather was too bad for our helicopter and zhey were afraid ze roads would wash out or be shut. So Henri, he take zhem, ze Fat Controller and ze girl—zhey board him in Tidmouth just as he pull out to go to Brendam."

"And then he charged on, right through the storm itself which caught them about midway, running just as fast as the Tempest's peak winds themselves, some say. However fast he ran, it was fast enough. The girl was saved and…well, I'm sure the Hatts will never, ever scrap Henry now. Some days even he believes that. It's about time," Justin concluded with another smile.

It took Hurricane a few additional beats to respond. "Whoa, I had no idea," he replied at last, still unsure of how to reconcile some of his thoughts. "Like I said, I don't know him real well yet, but he seemed kinda…struck me as…"

"Timid?" Justin supplied, his smile turning lopsided.

"Yeah, that. Sorry."

"Don't be. Henry _is _a little timid. And nervous. Doesn't stop him being brave when he needs to be and being about the kindest fellow you'll ever meet, does it now?"

"I guess you're right…" He paused again. "Geeze, he never said a word about any of this."

"He wouldn't. He doesn't like to talk or even think about it. Don't misunderstand, Hurricane. Henry's proud of what he did and he'd do it again in a heartbeat if asked, but it scared him too. He doesn't even like rain, so you can imagine what a nightmare running through one of the worst storms ever to hit Sodor must've been for him."

"_Oui. _So try not to ask him about any of zis, ever. If you like and want to, some of ze other engines will talk about it instead. Zhey call what he did, Henry's Run."

"Whoa…" Hurricane repeated, now thoroughly impressed. He remembered the North Sea Tempest very well. He'd been at the steelworks back then and the violent storm had woken him and Frankie up in the middle of the night. He distinctly recalled how they'd stared out of their cozy shelter together, the both of them very glad that they were under cover and safe and dry and not out in the thick of it. It was hard to imagine any engine running at speed through such a storm, let alone a nervous sort like Henry. But that had to be Henry's secret strength, Hurricane thought, his determination to do whatever his people asked of him, no matter what the cost. It was a trait which Hurricane thought very admirable; he too needed to please others…other engines and the humans as a whole who commanded them all.

And then, speaking of other engines and the humans who crewed them, they all heard Adler's whistle as he entered the roundhouse yard and then rolled forward onto their turntable preparatory to backing into his berth. The German engine looked very happy and Hurricane felt likewise happy when he saw the other loco's new/old crew _plus _Missus Doyon emerge after getting him parked. The woman must've ridden along with them for at least part of the day, perhaps to translate for the two new German workers, the big tank engine thought.

To add to his joy, once the three humans were done settling Adler and fussing over him, Missus Doyon made a point of coming over to speak to Hurricane next and introduce him to her colleagues.

"Well, Hurricane? Still behaving yourself, I hear? Not giving too many other naughty engines a hard time?"

"Oh no, not me, ma'am! And Mister Paulson and Mister Greene, they're behaving themselves too."

That prompted a delighted laugh, after which Denise began speaking to the two men with her in a foreign language, presumably German. She patted Hurricane's buffer plate while she spoke to them and they looked up at the tank engine with appreciation and then stepped aside a little to look at his driving arrays. Hurricane guessed that she was telling them that he too was a ten-wheeler, just like Adler, but had been redesigned for better agility.

The two new humans were interesting… He saw that one of them was really more of a tall, gangly boy than a grown man, now that Hurricane could examine them more closely, and he wondered if the young one was the older man's son. He supposed that Adi himself could fill them all in later. Eventually, the trio moved on to Justin and the other Canadian engines and Denise switched over to a mix of French and German so Hurricane could no longer listen in to what she was saying. He continued watching all three humans, however. Now that he knew that the Doyons had once worked with Justin and Francois and could see that Missus Doyon was still being very friendly with both engines, it occurred to him that she and her husband would probably come over to visit their roundhouse now and then anyway, even if Henry wasn't there anymore. Just the thought of such a possibility cheered him up even more. His own new crew had already become quite dear to him, true, and he enjoyed their company very much. But in his precise and linear machine mind the Doyons were now inextricably linked with the end of the fear and confusion he'd felt while waiting all alone in his shed at the steelworks, and because of it, he would always feel very kindly towards the both of them.

And then, quite suddenly, the engines found themselves on their own again, free at last to turn to their red and black shed-mate at the far end of the roundhouse and eagerly question him about his day. And Adler, much to their joy, was ready to talk.

Erich and Dieter Dornwirth were a former crew from the time Adler had been handed over to the Russians as part of their reparations package after the War, he told them. He'd worked as a freighter then, pulling goods trains from one side of the incipient new nation to the other. Towards the end of that period, he'd been assigned to a yard full of engines which specialized in hauling salvage, and that was where their paths had crossed, the German _Raubvogel _class 48 and the fractured remnants of one specific family of humans. A lot of the men who worked on the railways then were only working with locomotives in order to have jobs; they had no particular love for them. But Erich Dornwirth, he was different. He'd always been a railroader, even during the War, and he knew his engines and recognized Adler for what he was, a survivor of a very specialized class built for far more exalted work than what he was currently engaged in.

Unfortunately for Adler, his owners at the time did not share his new crew's high regard for his former status, they only cared that he was an uncommonly strong engine for his size and therefore routinely assigned him the heaviest loads and worked him far harder than he ought to have worked. The unending toil soon began to wear on him. Although his sympathetic crew did their best to help him, they couldn't give him what he needed most, the rest and time he needed to recuperate from being overloaded so often. Then came the inevitable day that Adler was made to begin hauling his own fellow steam engines to the smelters. Their time was over. New models of the more powerful and more efficient diesels were infiltrating the tracks, and it was important for the newly fledged German Democratic Republic to be perceived as modern and progressive.

Erich and Dieter Dornwirth were dismayed by their new tasking. They'd grown very fond of Adler, who never complained no matter what was asked of him, and his mute struggles to get through his days distressed them. They also knew that the last steamer Adler hauled would mark the end of him as well. It would be a one-way trip for him, with no hope of reprieve. Luckily, Erich Dornwirth's life-long love of steam locomotives had led him to early on foster a more worldly view of them than some…

"He know about Sodor," Adler went on. "And zere vere other old railvay men, real railvay men, who vork _mit _him who know too. Zey help Erich get a letter out to Sir Topham, to let him know I exist and maybe could be bought. _Natuerlich _I did not know this zen, but zat is vhat happen. Erich wrote, pleez, offer zis man money, he run zis railway, and I zink he would like money more zhan _zu _cut up vun last _Lok_ for scrap. And so it vas done. Vun morning I vas taken avay, but not in ze vay I expect. I vas so surprise, too. I did not know it vas Erich who helped me, not until last night, and now I know I owe him my life."

"That's amazing," said Justin. "He was probably taking a real risk, your Erich, reaching out to another non-Soviet country like that. It's a good thing the people who were running your railway were as greedy as he hoped they were."

"_Ja. _He made a good guess. And now he and Dieter vill be much safer, to live here on Sodor with me."

"Did he say anything about how Missus Beauchamp got them out? Does she still have connections, or…?"

"Zat he did not explain," Adler said. "Ve did not speak all too much yet. Zey are still being settled and there is much paperwork to do. Zey only came after noon today and Miz Denise vill help for a little vhile." He paused, took a deep breath, and suddenly grinned, a brilliant smile of real delight. "But soon we vill be workink together again, like before, _und _zis time it vill be very much more joyful for us!"

"I'm so happy for you, Adi…"

The other engines added their congratulations; they all liked Adler and truly wished him well. Hurricane found himself thinking that it was certainly the day for surprising revelations…first this business with Adi and then finding out so much more about the Canadians… And a day for heroics, too! Who could have guessed that Henry could be such a hero, or his own crew, Lorne and Pat, and now this Erich person, who'd somehow convinced Sir Topham Hatt to buy Adler and save him just in time? Hurricane liked hearing about engines being brave and the humans who helped them when locos were in trouble—it reassured him. He remembered wondering about the younger half of Adi's former crew and his curiosity swelled again.

"So is that…Deets? Deeder boy?...Erich's son?" he asked hopefully.

"_Nein. _His nephew," Adler replied, smiling a little again over the other engine's fumbling of the name. "Erich and his brother, zey lived once on ze same street with zer families, and zey vere almost all killed during vun terrible night of bombing. Only ze two survive, _und _Erich cared for ze boy after."

Hurricane winced as only engines could wince. "Aw, that's awful."

"Yes, it vas a very, very bad time for all ze humans. Later, vunce ze War vas over, Erich always say Dieter vas his son and get him vork _mit _ze railvays, to keep him close. Ze Russians, zey did not care zat he vas too young. Zey only care zat ze trains run."

"And now they're here," Justin intoned soberly. "Well, it sounds like a good deal all around. Good for them and good for you. I'm guessing they won't have much cause to be homesick."

"No… Zey are already very happy to get avay. Like me."

The conversation dwindled after that and edged over onto more generic topics for the other engines sensed that the German 48 was leaving a lot unsaid and they weren't sure whether they really wanted to hear all the troubling details. It was enough that Adler now had his own crew at last and that he already cared for them and that they cared deeply for him in turn, deeply enough to have given up their own homeland. That was the part they chose to reflect upon and which made them happy when they later began to drift off to sleep…that there were still humans left in the world who cared enough about the welfare of locomotives to disrupt their own lives and follow them to the ends of the Earth.

to be continued...


End file.
